Open House Ideas for Teachers: Weekend Warriors

Are you getting ready for an end-of-the-year open house? Maybe your school, like mine, welcomes parents with a back to school night in the fall. No matter when your open house is, this linky is for YOU! The Weekend Warriors are joining together this month to bring you all sorts of helpful and creative ideas to make your parent night *SPECTACULAR*! 

 I am here to share lots of ideas that I hope you can use for either a fall OR end of the year parent night. Be sure to PIN these to your Pinterest board and SAVE these ideas for whenever you need them! You can find all of the links to the freebies and projects shown here at the end of the post!

You're having company! Of course, you want your classroom to be as tidy, organized, colorful and cheerful as possible. Create a welcoming environment and a great first impression! It sets the stage for a wonderful evening! Try turning on a few lamps for mood lighting or getting a fragrance plug-in to make your room feel more like a home. 

Before parents enter the classroom, the first thing they may see is a bulletin board in the hallway or outside of your room.
 Here are two cute and very easy to prep ideas! 

Students might write about a few favorite things they learned during the year! 

For a back to school bulletin board, have students write a recipe for a successful year! 

 Once visitors arrive at your classroom, invite them in with a welcome sign! 

On a table near the door, have handouts, sign up sheets and other important things like donation requests :) available. I copy these signs on bright cardstock and display them on an easel stand.

Avoid awkward moments for yourself and parents that arrive early by giving them something to do! Parents can write down their hopes for the year, complete a Thinking Map about their child, or make a happy note or bookmark to give them. 

On your table or at the student desks, you may want to have out some memory booklets from current students or former students. In the past, I have had a few students from the previous year make an extra copy to have out at open house in the fall. Parents will love to see the expectation for work quality by exiting students and it also gives them a peek at the fun times ahead!

Another way to give parents a peek at the year is to have a photo slide show running on the SMART Board as parents enter!

  I set out classroom photo albums of years past too so parents get a sense of my teaching style and the activities I like to plan. I even decorate one of these All About Me Tee posters from Really Good Stuff so they can get to know the teacher better too!

Open house is the time for kiddos to SHINE! Want a creative way to showcase student work at parent night? 

 Have your students make a pizza box portfolio!

 Inside these boxes are all of the special projects and work samples that my students are very proud of! The boxes are a super keepsake that parents just LOVE! 

 If you are one of the lucky teachers (HA!) that gets to give an informational presentation, you might like the help of a PowerPoint to display on your SMART Board. Sometimes the excitement of it all can cause an enormous mental block, so this is a nice way to summarize information in a very professional way. 

With a PowerPoint, it is also easy to print handouts for parents that were unable to attend the session. This file is EDITABLE, so you can type in what you need to include. I already typed in a bunch of ideas in the slides to get you started! 

 Even though you are organized and all set with super ideas, you might still get the open house jitters especially if you have to SPEAK (choke)!!! The SINGLE most important thing to remember during any kind of parent night is to just be wonderful YOU- knowlegeable, enthusiastic, genuine and sincere.

Everyone loves a gift! At the end of your evening, send your visitors home with a small token of your appreciation. You can search my Pinterest board for some cute ideas for things like a bag of Pop Rocks or popcorn to thank them for "popping in". 

 But why not also send something along that will reinforce the learning in your classroom or for use over the summer??? Consider sending practice kits home with parents at open house. You can prep some game boards, flash cards, sight word lists and all sorts of goodies and just bag them up! Throw in a fun Smencil, a cute pencil sharpener, a book, a bookmark, some dice, game markers and you have a SUPER thank you gift!

Teachers Pay Teachers, Teachers Notebook and Educents are great places to find materials for your grade level. Check out places like Geddes or Oriental Trading Company for fun trinkets for your take home bags! I guarantee they will be a big hit!

I like to give my parents a little business card or fridge magnet with my classroom phone number and email so they can easily find my info when they need to contact me. 

I made these cute pencil shaped business cards from clipart by Creative Clips and just typed in my contact info. You can design your own cute cards at Vistaprint. 

  Wrap up the evening and leave your guests with something to think about like a special quote, a touching poem or... a bit of humor! 
 I'm sure you've seen this funny before...

SMILES!
 So when your parent night comes around, KEEP CALM and HAVE FUN! I always have to remind myself that parents don't really care so much about the fluff, or the specifics of the curriculum as much as they want to leave with the feeling that their child will be or has been loved, challenged and excited about school! 

    Thanks a bunch for stopping by for this edition of the Weekend Warriors! I hope that you found some new ideas here to make your open house a *night to remember*! 

Links to Resources

 You can find all of the printables to make a Pizza Box Portfolio {here}.

You can find The Write Stuff pencil craftivity by A Cupcake for the Teacher {here}.
Download Cooking up a Great Year by Miss Kindergarten Love {here}.
The parent wishes signs and slips from Funky First Grade Fun can be found {here}.
Grab my free welcome sign {here}!
  Open House table signs freebies are {here}!
You can download the Back to School Night PowerPoint presentation {here}!
 Free photo DVD covers can be downloaded {here}.
My blank bookmark patterns are {here}.
Pop Rocks treat signs from Cupcake Cutiees Party can be purchased {here}.
All About Me posters are available {here}.

Tips for Encouraging Parent Involvement in the Classroom

The key to a successful year is having the support of the parents of the children we care for and educate. We know it is just as important to build relationships with our parents as it is to do so with our kiddos! This edition of the Weekend Warriors is all about getting parents involved in their child's education.

I love that we have open house the first week of school. My evening always includes a presentation of what can be expected throughout the year. It's great that I have that chance to speak from the heart, to tell parents my philosophy on education, to ask for their assistance in working as a TEAM, to help to ease their anxieties about the unknown and all of that good stuff! The parents always leave happy, relieved and excited that the year will be a great one! I leave with tons of party helpers, classroom volunteers and co-teachers! Involvement at its best!

This is the parent night presentation that I use. 

It helps to have a format to keep on track so I don't forget what I want to say!

  These are just a few of the slides. You can read the full description and see it at my store here!

 Parent involvement beyond a classroom newsletter? There's an app for that!

Did you know that Scholastic has a great way to send information out to parents! 

It's called Class Messenger. 

All of the information and phone numbers are completely hidden. You can send out reminders, photos of your class in action, donation requests and quick notes to helpers. 

BLOOMZ is also a good app to look into. Teachers have found great success using Class Dojo too. 

Do a little research to find out which would be a good fit for you!

Happy teaching!

First Week Photos, Freebies, Finds and Fun!

I survived the first week of school! After having been absent from blogging for a while now, I am excited to get back to sharing! It seems like forever since I've even been able to get on the computer to do anything but school work!

The first week was just amazing! I cannot get over how wonderful my class is! They are so mature and responsible compared to how my first graders were at the beginning of the year! It was very encouraging and I am excited to get into a groove this week.

To encourage more of this outstanding behavior, we started our clip chart today! To make the clips more special, I decided to have the kids paint them. We used a small sponge roller from Michael's and acrylic paint in bright colors. Paper plates were perfect paint trays. The kids got to choose some stickers and gems to decorate their clip!

There is a freebie behavior clip chart at my shop that is editable.

Decorating the clips made them heavy and in the middle of our reading lesson, the center of the chart fell right off the ribbon and came crashing down. It is now stapled to a bulletin board! 

Instead of our I can statements, I chose to add Daily 5 CAFE strategies to the Focus Wall because the kids did Daily 5 in first grade and are familiar with them. Each day, I changed them up to fit the read aloud during story time. With so much time spent on routines and procedures, this was the best way to work in my reading lessons for the first week!

You can grab a CAFE Poster set freebie at my Teachers Pay Teachers shop!

This is our Daily Schedule. It's black and bright of course! Let me tell you, it was followed very loosely last week. I always over plan for the first week! I forget how long it takes to unpack supplies, explain all of the routines, and go over expectations. But it helps to keep me on track for sure!

Two days after the start of school, we had our parent night. This was the first year that I had poor attendance. Ten of the 24 students did not have a parent there. I was all prepared with my PowerPoint presentation full of very important information about the year. Luckily, I had many handouts on the desk for reference and have sent those home.

I had sign-up sheets for room parents and party volunteers just out side the door. 

Each parent received a home practice kit which is a huge bag of books, game pieces, novelty items and ready to go learning activities for home practice. Title one grant monies provide these for all students in the building.

On the desk were several forms to fill out with contact information, our special class schedule, a note about Daily 5, my class brochure and a parent wishes form. Parents always have so much they want to share with you about their child, so they were happy to be able to write their wishes for the year since there was not time to chat!

This is the presentation I used. It is editable and is available at my shops!

Still I forgot to mention certain things like the fact that second graders and cupcakes with frosting that stains clothes do not go well together! There's so much to tell in just 25 minutes! We ran two sessions so that parents could attend another classroom for a sibling at another time. I had only 3 parents for session 2 so it was a little less formal!

We made this adorable craftivity from Miss Kindergarten for our open house display board and wrote a recipe for a successful year! I modified the hat to include their name and a title. I forgot to add the shoes to this example!

Parent wishes shared by Funky First Grade Fun went in this little basket from the Target dollar aisle.

This was the gift I gave my students for the first day of school. It is an expandable file from the Dollar Tree for their prize tickets. I called it a prize pouch. Inside was a homework coupon and this poem was attached.

If you think you might like the prize pouch sign for yourself, let me know and I'll throw it in Dropbox for you to download!

This is our ticket box filled with Mel D's reward coupons! The box is from Michael's too!

This idea is from my teammates! The students write in a composition notebook and the parents write back! There is a freebie sign in my TPT shop!

I've been busy creating signs, signs and more signs! This great editable oval basket template is from Ladybug's Teacher Files. This is what I call my hand-in box for work to be assessed. Next to it is a cup with highlighters and this poster! If you know who has shared this awesome poster, please let me know so I can give credit! Thanks! So many files...

This is the plastic home-school folder the school purchases for all students. It has a clear pocket. I printed a sign on computer paper to match our classroom theme.

Here is our super cute second day of second grade frame. I purchased an open wooden frame from Michael's, glued some letters onto white cardstock and cut around the letters. The pictures of the kids are so darn cute!  Here is just the frame:

This is my student teacher modeling her fine DIY!

Math this week was fun! We did many hands on activities to review sums to ten but also learned how to work together as a group and the expectations for working with manipulatives. This was an activity using two-sided chips. The students toss them and record the combinations for making ten in picture form, and writing equations vertically and horizontally. I love that we get to demonstrate on the Smartboard! Download a recording sheet for shake and toss!

This was an activity for sums to ten called mystery math bags. Students picked out ten items from the bag, sorted them by attribute and wrote addition equations to represent the objects.

This is our sweet year attendance check-in and calendar math. You can see both of them at my shops too!

And finally, my new lamp shade from Walmart! It matches my zebra task chair! What a find!

Thanks for sticking with me for this very long post! There is lots more fun to be had in the second week of second grade so I'll be back with more pictures soon! Hope you all have a wonderful week!