At Eyestone Elementary School, parents are visiting classrooms to learn how children learn to read.

The Wellington (Colorado) grade school hosted its second Reading Night on Jan. 28, an event that attracted about 400 parents and children.

“The more parents are involved, the higher the achievement of kids,” said Principal David Sobson.

He said Eyestone parents have always supported the school, but the staff wanted to help them become more connected with the curriculum. Last year, teachers worked together to design activities for three Writing Nights. This year the topic was reading. Next year’s topic is undecided.

Whatever the area of study, the key to these special nights is to make sure parents and children are active participants, Sobson said.

Following a group dinner, classroom teachers presented reading exercises appropriate for their students’ grade level.

“Parents can see how their child is relating and how the teacher presents the material,” Sobson explained.

Children and parents then worked together on an activity that gave parents materials and ideas for ways to support their child’s learning at home.

“I learned techniques and different strategies to help the kids have a more positive experience as we read together,” said Larry Knipple, the father of a first-grader and a third-grader.

“It helped us understand how they’re learning and the things we can do at home,” said Jamie Mackey, mother of a first-grader named Austin.

Austin, 7, was equally excited about Reading Night because he reads to his 3-year-old sister, Laney. He will tackle “any kind of book she picks out,” he said.

“I think having the kids read every night is really important,” Mackey added.

Teacher Ruth Brungardt selected the booklet “In the Tree” for her group of kindergarteners. First they went through the book looking at the pictures. They read together and made of list of new words and punctuation. They also counted the number of times a word was repeated on a page.

For their craft project, parents and children made magic wands to point at words and move along the lines of words when they read together at home.

Reading Night involved all classrooms, including fifth-graders. The older students made up nonsense words and then crafted sentences and pictures that would help their peers guess the meaning of the new word.

Ten-year-old Tom Kiahtipes wrote: “Tom and Tim ate fried chicken, and they skukedafied their faces with fried chicken. They licked it clean in two seconds.”

“Stuffed!” their classmates responded for the definition of “skukedafied.”

Sobson said that as he and Eyestone teachers thought about how much the world has changed since they were in grade school, they realized young children will need a higher level of skills when they reach adulthood. The solution, they concluded, is to get parents more involved in helping their children meet the challenges of the future.