Meet the Teacher Night!

In our school district, we hold our open house/meet the teacher night before school has started.  Families have a time frame of 2 hours to come to school, look around, meet their new teachers and drop off their supplies.  I like to make it as quick and easy as possible for them!

When I first started teaching, I would have parents fill out ALL the paperwork.  I did this for many years until I finally wised up!  I realized that the only thing that was important to me that night was to know how their child was going to go home on the first day of school.

Parents fill out the bright pink form at open house and that’s it!  They can spend their time visiting with me and helping their child put away their supplies.

Inside the white folder are a variety of things that they can take home, read, and fill out for school the next week.

Here is a breakdown of what is inside the folder.  It can change slightly from year to year, but this is the gist of it!

1.  Money bag – we like to use real money for our math explorations.  We ask parents to send in a variety of coins at the beginning of the year.  At the end of the year, we use this money for a little treat!

2. Donors Choose photo release – I write a variety of grants throughout the year, so I like to have this one done and ready to go at the beginning of the year.

3. Family directory form – I put together a class directory of contact information for families to plan play dates, birthday parties, and so on.

4. All About Me Bag – I love this activity from Kindergarten Squared.  Kids will bring their bag back throughout the week, and it is a great time filler for the first week of school.  We share a few a day.  It’s a wonderful way for children to get to know each other and practice those ever important speaking and listening standards.

5. Getting to Know Your Child -  I love this questionnaire from Growing Firsties.   It gives me a little glimpse into how a parent views their child’s academics.  We meet for our first goal setting conference in October, but this gives me a bit of an idea of how each child learns best.

I also include a variety of papers for families to keep at home.

I make a teacher contact magnet with information on how to join our class using REMIND, my e-mail, and my Twitter info.  I also put together an information flip book.  This includes the most important information that I think parents need to know right away at the beginning of the year. I also include the lunch menu and the student’s lunch number to practice before school starts.

While parents are filling out the transportation form, the kiddos start to empty out their supplies around the room.  I make a slideshow using Google Presentation with all the necessary information for families.  There are only about 5 slides.  I don’t want families doing too much because most have other classrooms to go to!

Most of our supplies are community supplies (like glue, markers, crayons, etc.) and they dump them in the labeled bins. 

The supplies that aren’t shared go in their supply drawers.

My classroom has choice seating so children are constantly changing seats.  They keep the majority of their personal supplies in these drawers.  I was lucky enough to have these supplied for me in my classroom.

I really wanted kids to be successful and independent putting their supplies away so I put together a sample drawer.  Not all of these items stay in their drawers.  I just want them all in there at open house so I can label them with their names later on.  The only things that stay in the drawer are their pencil box, 1 binder, and 1 folder.  I add a glue stick, crayons, and an eraser to their pencil box.  The rest of their supplies are stored elsewhere around the room.

I hope this was helpful to you!  I love meeting the new kiddos in my room, and having everything completely organized allows me to interact more with kids and families in the short time they are in my room.

Do you have any tips or tricks for open house?  Leave a comment below and share the knowledge!

More ABC Activities

I’m excited to share with you some of my favorite (and easy!) alphabet activities that I use with m,y kiddos at the beginning of the year.

#1 Leap Frog Letter Factory

I found these cards about 8 years ago when my oldest daughter was young.  I am a HUGE fun of the Leap From games and DVDs.  These letter cards correspond with the Letter Factory videos.

I was happy to learn that you can still buy these letter cards at Amazon! Just click on the image to go and check them out!

#2 Alphabet Treasure Hunt

We also have a ton of fun with this game from Lakeshore.

#3 Kagan Games

  My kids LOVE playing quiz quiz trade and once they learn the basic directions, you can play with all sorts of skills.  This game is from the Kindergarten set of ELA games.

Here is a little peek inside of my ABC cupboard – I have two big cupboard spaces filled with ABC games and activities!  I always pick up ABC puzzles when I find them…I try to purchase 1 or 2 (or more!) games during the year to add to the selection.  The children do not choose from this cabinet! I pull out activities for centers that the children will work from.

I love taking things that I already have and turning them into an activity.  It makes for an easy, and CHEAP way to keep the kids engaged.  These are my go-to activities when I don’t have a lot of time to prep, or I need something that is pretty simple for the kids to figure out.  They’re also great for Daily 5 rotations!

I’ve organized all of these games into a packet for you. There are 20 activities total.  They are available as a bundled package or 10 in each set.  I hope you like them and that they will make the beginning of the year easier for you!!

I’ll be back soon with more of my favorite ABC activities!

Christmas in July {Day 4} The Backpack Boogie!

Today’s deal of the day features some great goodies to get your year started off right!  There are activities for whole group and some center fun!

You’ll find fun center activities:

and MATH activities too!

and some fun whole group activities!

Be sure to stop over at my Facebook page and like it for some great freebies from this unit!  This unit will be on sale TODAY ONLY (Wednesday!)

Back it up…

I am SOO behind in posting!  Here’s a quick peek from some literacy centers from a few (okay a lot) weeks back!

These little shakers are from Lakeshore Learning – I don’t think they make them anymore, but rice and letter beads in a bottle will work equally as good!

This center came from Julie and Deanna’s Back to School center pack.

This beginning sound activity also came from Julie and Deanna.

For this center, the kiddos used the Lakeshore alphabet stampers.  They stamped the latter and then crossed it out on their sheet.

This one came from Julie and Deanna’s pack as well!

This wasn’t a center activity, we did it as a whole group activity when I was in a meeting.  The kiddos did awesome! The idea came from Kim Adsit’s Going to School Pack.  This is a great one to keep in your sub tub – it keeps the kiddos engaged and is easy for the substitute! 

P.S.  If you haven’t already entered the contest to win a whole bunch of goodies from some pretty awesome bloggers – click {HERE} to read the details! The contest is ending soon!

Bus Graph

This post should be titled short and sweet, because that’s what it is!  Here is our little bus graph, which is a SLIGHT twist on Deanna’s busses.  We read Wheels on the Bus and played with our names with the song, and then made these cute little busses.  We turned it into a math activity by adding our bus numbers and making a graph.  (Yes, all of my kiddos ride the bus!)

Just in case you are wondering….letters and numbers were cut using my newest favorite teaching tool – my Silhouette!

Math Centers and random things…

Holy bananas! The first 10 days of school went so fast!  I’ve had so much fun getting to know my new kinders, but I sure am exhausted!

I don’t have much for you here…just a few randoms and our math centers from last week!

Here are the sweet little handprint puzzles!  The card is from Kim Adsit’s site – it’s a free download!  I had the kiddos decorate the envelope too.  So sweet!

We started out with colors and shapes and used Julie Lee’s Brown Bear unit a lot! One of my favorite activities was this glue practice sheet!  The kiddos loved it (despite some tired hands, and some blobs of glue!)  I might have to do another one again soon…

Here’s a quick and easy one for the color blue…

I used my 3/4” circle punch for the “blueberries”.  Super quick! Click on the picture below to download!

Our first go at math centers! We had 3 “real” centers and a couple of exploration centers.  Before we did the dice rolling independently we did an activity whole group, so everyone got practice and learned the rules for rolling the dice!

The brown bear pages are from Julie Lee’s brown bear pack.

1. Roll and write: this was a little challenging for some, but I really got a good picture of who could and who couldn’t write their numbers!

2. Dice roll and dob.  I just used a plain die and used a sharpie to add the shapes. (We used bingo dobbers)

3. Counting and one-to-one correspondence.  I worked closely with this group – again it showed me what kind of beginning skills my little guys have.

4. This one is a lakeshore counting box – The Candy Jar – great for beginning centers and practicing number ID and one-to-one.

5. We had to do some exploring with unifix cubes before we started patterning with them this week!!

Peace and Love

The finished product:

Sorry that the picture is kind of light – the colors are super bright and fun! The lights are off in the hallway and doesn’t make for good picture taking!

I love how it turned out – super simple, and took me all of 10 minutes to put up!  Just how I like it – especially since it will only be up for a couple of weeks!

Thanks for all the help with the font! I was too anxious to get started and used a combination of Turkey Sandwich and Brady Bunch…but the real font was Floraless!

So….

Kristy Sully – send me an e-mail and let me know what you would like from my TpT shop! You are the winner of the font contest!

More classroom pics coming soon!