Start planning for your Open House now and ROCK IT!

Wow!!!! How is the end of July here already?!?! The Summer has just FLOWN by!!

If you’re like me, the new school year is just a couple weeks away and panic mode sets in!! How is August almost here?? Where did my Summer go?? What did I do all Summer!?! Ha!! It’s time to get my butt in gear!!

One thing that I have been working on, is my Kindergarten Orientation slideshow. Some of you call it Open House…some call it a Meet and Greet. It’s all the same idea. Come and meet your teacher, see your classroom, learn what to expect and put your supplies away. But, it’s your chance to start off on the right foot!! You don’t want to miss your chance to make an awesome first impression!!

Here are some tips on how to make yours a GREAT one!!

This year, I decided my slideshow needed a make-over. At our orientation, we have all of the parents and new students there at once. It’s a WhOLE lot of people in one spot. It definitely helps when your slideshow is cute, bright and fun!! It not only helps keep the parents’ attention, but, it gives the kids something to look at too while their parents are listening to all of our school policies and procedures….and hopefully the kids will catch some of those procedures too! Ha!

So, here’s what I came up with! An Editable Slideshow Template!! It has lots of cute title slides that cover just about every topic that you can think of! Then, there are additional slide templates for you to include your own text on. Customize yours with your own school policies and information and simply delete the slides that you don’t need. Easy, Peasy!!

Here’s what the slides look like:

There are slides for everything from Meet the Teacher, Arrival and Dismissal, School Attendance to Curriculum, Specials and Parties!

Customizing these slides to fit your own school policies and procedures is Super Easy!! Here’s all you have to do:

Here are some examples of my finished slides after I inserted my own text.

Can we talk for a minute about that middle slide?? Have you guys heard about “Remind“? I’m going for it and trying it out this year! It seems super Easy and user friendly! Something that makes my life easier?!? Sign me up!!!

It’s a quick, easy way to share reminders, pictures and messages with your students’ parents!! And, it keeps all phone numbers private! Yay!!! Check out this little video to learn more!!

Click HERE to get an information sheet that might be helpful to hand out to parents that night at Open House!

And, here is an example of the user friendly instructions that Remind has available to you to pass out to your parents. When you sign up, it will generate one of these for you with your own unique codes.

Now, on to the last topic!

One of the most important parts of our Open House is to make our new students feel welcome and comfortable!!! This is my chance to make a good impression! You have to have a little fun!! You want your students’ first experience with you to be a positive one! Coming in and meeting you, seeing their new classroom and finding out where their backpacks will go and where they will sit will definitely put them a little more at ease on that first day! Open House makes things less strange and scary on that first day! This is just a little scavenger hunt that helps to ease the tension and it’s FUN!!! And, of course, they get to pick a treasure at the end!!! The first day in Kindergarten can get a little hairy…but, I rarely have criers anymore and I know that this is part of the reason why!!!

I posted these back in 2011. Hahahahaha! Wow, how clipart has changed since then! 😉 Read those OLD posts HERE and HERE! Then, I posted them again back in 2012 all through Google Docs. You can read those posts HERE.

Welp, I decided it was time for another update!! This time, they are posted in my TPT store and there are LOTS of choices!!

Click on the image below to see 11 different Kindergarten Scavenger Hunts!