Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
fathers club at elementary school	tfriedmann	12/06/03
a few father at my child's school are trying to form a "dad's club". our plan is to get together with our kids and spend time playing/learning, but mostly just have fun. so far we are planning open gym time, which has already been scheduled for his month on a friday after work. some of the other ideas that came up were trips to local museums,(air force museum is local and free admission) historic tours of our city(ie. local inventions and landmarks)picnics or cookouts with games, (weather permitting),walk-a-thon on local bikepaths, a movie night at the school. my question is does anyone have past experience trying this sort of thing? what other ideas had the most success for your group? what problems did your group encounter, if any? how did you fund your activities in your group? we are starting out as inexpensive as we can till we get going then i'm sure we are going to have to come up with some sort of funding (probably our pockets) any ideas would be a great help thanks
Answered By		Answered On
AliMcJ		12/06/03
What a very wonderful idea! Most of your funding (tickets) could be out of pocket with no problem. Transportation is an important consideration -- if you car pool, be sure that you have insurance that covers all passengers. Also, you should agree that it is an activity for dads and children to share, so no, "Gee I'm busy this week, but could my child come along," mostly for security reasons. I suppose an exception could be made in the case of an emergency and a pre-planned big deal outing, but in general, children must be accompanied by their dad, for security and supervision reasons. Perhaps you could get some funding through a walk-a-thon for your group (but I like the idea of doing a walk-a-thon as a group to support a charity). Recycling is a good way to collect extra money -- if you have recycling in your state. You could have a white elephant collection from dads and put them on eBay with a note in the listings that the money made from the items will go to fund your dad's club. Your activities sound wonderful because they are dad things. (I used to go to model airplane meets a lot with my dad when I was a little girl). Natural History Museums are good fun too. As in scouts, each dad also has a special skill he can share with the children -- things he makes. I have a wonderful memory of working with Al the postman at lapidary: this was nearly 50 years ago and I remember his name and the lapidary set up and being old enough two years later to take a lapidary class from him. Come to think of it, this may have been a dad club thing, as my dad took me and my brother up to the school on a Saturday and we were introduced to lapidary work one time and developing pictures in a darkroom another time -- clear memories (and what I learned there I applied to my first job, which involved darkroom skills and then I had my own darkroom I shared with a classmate in college). In both those cases, we didn't take a class in it, we just had an introduction to how it is done by a man who did those things as a hobby, in the darkroom, in a lapidary setup. It would be interesting to have dads share activities that are stereotypically non-dad activities (many men sew and cook, for example; many men "play with" dolls) to open everyone's minds to non-sexist thinking and how it is possible. For example some men play with dolls in terms of making art objects of them or in fashion design experiments, others make dioramas (and that skill is used in the film industry) with dolls -- in the same way that people do model railroads. What cool dads you guys are!

Additional Options and ratings are only visible when you login!