Open House Night in Kindergarten

Open house is always a big deal for me.  I don't put on the cart and pony show, but I do work hard to show off all of my students' hard work.

To get the parents and families to attend, I make sure to remind them when they are dropping off and picking up their children.  I send home a note and send out a Remind101 message.  I also post the information on my parent board outside my classroom several days before the event.  For many of my parents the concept of  Open House is new to them.  I have a lot of students who are the oldest or only child, so the idea of coming to school at night and looking at the classroom isn't anything they know about.  Our school also has a book fair during this time.  This too, helps to get parents to attend.

When the arrived, they were greeted with this door display.  My teaching partner found the idea on Pinterest.  I loved how it turned out.  I have moved it to an interior door i my classroom.  I love looking up and seeing it there.  I took a photo of each student yesterday in front of it; not sure what I'll do with them yet.  but they came out so cute.  Maybe I will use them in a mother's Day card.

I always make sure that I have at least one item from science, art, reading, writing and math out for parents to see. During this time, I also show a video slide show of everything we have done throughout the year.  My little iPhone gets a workout as I take pictures almost every single day.

On their desks, I placed the three life cycles books we made, their butterfly headband and their kindergarten memory book.  I saved all of their writing and art projects to include in their book.  For the cover, I personalized it with their name and used the photo that I took on the first day of school.   I will continue to add to the book until the last week of school.

Here is what our room looked like before the families arrived.

This is our Parts of a plant quilt.  I gave each student  a background piece, then directed them piece by pice on how to create it.

Our Earth Day projects were displayed in the front window.

Our Butterfly Mobiles were hung from the light fixture.  The students used water colors to paint each piece and markers to color in their title.

A few more photos of the butterfly headbands and books.

 aren't these butterfly headbands adorable?

During Open House night I also made sure to ask parent to sign-up for our A-Z Countdown to Summer.  We begin on Thursday April 30th.  you can read more about that here and grab your free editable A-Z Countdown information.