A robust crowd of Wallkill families descended on Ostrander Elementary School on Feb. 28 for the school’s annual Reading Game Night, as kids and parents feasted on a chili dinner while playing education reading-based games. The family nights have grown over the last several years, with approximately 130 attendees packing the Ostrander cafeteria for this year’s festivities.

The response for the community nights have built with each successive event. “I think this is our third year, we’ve always had the math and ELA (English Language Arts) night,” Ostrander teacher Debbie Reese said.

A new feature for this spring’s reading night was the addition of a series of tables in the school entranceway overflowing with books for the children to take home when they left the event. The books, including classic titles featuring the Hardy Boys, were donated from the Friends’ Used Book Shop when the Wallkill store closed its doors. “We’re giving away books so that the kids can build their own libraries,” Reese said. “When they closed they gave the books to us, and now we’re giving them away to families. It’s great because families can come and pick up as many books as they need and then go in and eat dinner and play games.”

As part of the community gathering, nearly 20 high school students from the Leo Club volunteered to help out with putting on the free event. Alex Lewis, a high school senior and President of the Leo Club, manned one of the tables as he distributed books to the elementary school students. “At the Leo Club we have a total pool of about 50 members, so this event came up and Mrs. Reese, who was my elementary school teacher, told us that there was this family game night going on at the elementary school,” Lewis said. “So we had a signup sheet and we had kids sign up for two separate sessions setting up before and after. We have the books here that we’re giving out for free and then we have a slew of games for the kids and families to play together.”
Wallkill Superintendent Kevin Castle, who was stationed behind the counter serving food all night, said he was impressed to see the high school students donate their time to help their younger counterparts. “That’s so cool because now you’ve got the high school kids, the elementary kids, you’ve got parents and teachers,” he said. “It’s just a nice community event.”

Inside the cafeteria, the kids ate chili prepared by Ostrander teachers and honed their reading skills by playing games such as Apples to Apples and Boggle Jr. The superintendent said the reading and math nights forge bonds between local families and strengthen ties to the district. “They’re important so that we can come together as teachers, students and parents and celebrate with a great dinner and enjoy fun reading activities,” Castle said. “It builds community. I’m very proud of our teachers and (Ostrander Principal) Natalie Harjes for putting this together. I’m glad that they’ve maintained it, because a lot of times you see things where it happens once and then it goes away. But because of the dedication of the teachers and principal, they’ve kept it going.”

Based on the smiles on everyone’s faces, the Reading Game Night was a big success. “This night’s about the families connecting with their kids and having fun,” Lewis said.