Learning, family and fun meet
One glance around the Robert R. Freeman Administrative Complex and you can see the ‘Family Matters: Game Night’ event is a success. Multiple families filled the tables in the boardroom to play games with their kids.
Game Night, hosted by the DeKalb County School District’s (DCSD)Department of Parent & Family Engagement, consisted of educational games for all grade levels to help with the alphabet, rhyming, place value, and more.
“I’ve been to several events held here, and I thought this would be a fun learning experience for them,” said Jackie Coley, who attended the event with her sons, Cayden and Tesai. “I hope they learn some things about test taking and improving their test scores and just how to interact with people and have fun.”
Her sons spent some of the evening playing with the life-size chess game.
But life-size chess wasn’t the only option for the children in attendance. There was life-size Connect Four, Jenga, and bowling pins. As for “regular-size” games, there were plenty of those as well.
“When I was growing up we would get together and play checkers, UNO, and Monopoly so I was like ‘let’s bring it to the school district, and we got rave reviews,’” said Region 5 Parent Facilitator, Tamesha Favors. “Everyone asked when we’d do it again. I thought it was the best thing ever to get families out.”
This is the second year for the event geared at gathering families for quality time and educating the kids.
“We hope that this can continue after tonight,” said Region 1 Family Engagement Facilitator, Angelica Rosso. “For families to have game night or any other kind of night pizza or movie night. To enjoy the family, quality time.”
“We want to be an extension of resources for parents to be able to provide for their children,” said Favors. “That’s something we here at Parent & Family Engagement and the DeKalb County School District take pride in. It takes a village, and we’re an extension of that. And so we try to provide resources for our families to be able to interact with their children at home because ultimately we want student achievement. And we pride ourselves on student achievement. And we’re so happy to be a department that has an opportunity to feed into that.”