A special event can help you get to know club members’ parents better and get them more involved.

A fun way to keep in touch with club members’ parents is to plan a family party. Parents can get to know club leaders better and spend an enjoyable time with their kids.

When parents are better acquainted with club, they’ll be more likely to support it and help out from time to time. Add any of these ideas to your special event:

  • Make a display of recent activity award projects.
  • Post pictures of club meetings on a bulletin board. Parents love to see pictures of their child.
  • Create a short survey telling about upcoming activity awards and asking when parents would be willing to help. Send it home at the end of your special event.

Photo Scavenger Hunt

Have family teams bring a digital camera or phones. Make a list of items that can be found around the church or church grounds. Give each family a copy and turn them loose to find the items and take pictures of them. (Option: Instead of just items, include poses that the families must take pictures of: parent in the pulpit, child giving parent bunny ears, etc.). When the first family finishes, you can check the shots on the camera and award a prize. Have a devotional based on Jeremiah 29:13 or Proverbs 2:1-5.

Cake Contest

Ask parents to bring an unfrosted cake for their family team, plus decorations. Provide frosting in various colors. Let family teams decorate. While they work, come up with a prize category for each cake and award prizes when time is up. Photograph each family with their cake.

Craft Party

Let family members rotate to different craft stations. Ideas:

  • Decoupage Boxes. Family members decoupage papier-mache boxes and put treats in them for each other.
  • Tea Bags. Take the tags off tea bags. Use craft punches to punch out two matching shapes for a new tag. Write a love message on one shape and then glue the shapes back to back onto the tea bag string.
  • Pencil Toppers. Cut two matching shapes out of felt. Decorate with glitter, jewels, buttons, and so on. Glue around three sides of the shapes, back to back, to make pencil toppers.
  • Wax Crystal Candles. No need to use hot wax! Decorate a heat-safe jar with whatever method you’d like (paint; tie on crayons or sticks with raffia; glue on nature items, buttons, pennies, etc.). Use a glue dot or hot glue to secure a tabbed, semi-rigid, pre-primed wick to the bottom of the jar. Fill jar with different colors of wax crystals.

Sidewalk Chalk Party

Plan a party this summer to keep in touch with club members and families. It makes a great opportunity for inviting prospective club members, so their parents can meet the club leaders. Have club books and awards available for new parents to look over. Have a question-and-answer time with club leaders.

Play games with sidewalk chalk in the church parking lot:

  • Disk Golf. Draw “holes” with chalk for players to try to throw the flying disks into.
  • Foursquare. Four players stand in their own squares and bounce a ball between the squares.
  • Giant Tic-tac-toe. Players throw a beanbag at the square they want to claim. If they get it in, they put their mark in the square.
  • Family Portraits. Family members lie down so another family member can trace around them. Draw a picture frame around the whole family group when all the outlines are done. Then decorate each outline to look like the person.
  • Bozo Buckets. Draw 6 circles on the ground in a line. A player starts at the starting line and tosses a pebble into “bucket” 1. If successful, he or she tries for “bucket” 2 and so on.
  • Obstacle Course. Using chalk, create a variety of paths and challenges for kids and families to go through. Ideas: Curvy lines to follow, small circles or Xs drawn to show where to hop (small hops, large jumps, jumping jacks, etc.), two straight parallel lines that kids have to walk over with one foot on the outside of each line, large circle where kids have to spin, etc.
  • Hopscotch. Draw a hopscotch outline using chalk. Player tosses a bean bag to land in one of the squares. Each player has to hop once in each of the squares, skipping the square that has the bean bag.

Choose an event or two and get your club members’ parents more involved!