Open House Time

Tonight was our open house at school. I love seeing the kids and their parents; however, I dislike the long day at work and how exhausted I feel at the end. I've been doing really well with exercising every night this week and I'm currently trying to work up the energy to exercise tonight. No reason to stop a good routine, right?

Anyways, back to open house. (My easy-to-be distracted ways are kicking in majorly tonight.)

Open house is done drop-in style at my school. It begins with a spaghetti dinner hosted by PTO to raise money and follows with a PTO meeting and a visit to the classroom.

I decided my second year of teaching to make Open House about the kids, rather than about the teacher. Meet the Teacher night is my time to host. Open House is the kids' time to host. They show their parents around and tell them about the room. I also typically have lots of student work on display (like our pigs that I posted about yesterday!). 

Parents start the evening by playing "Guess Who" and looking around the room to find their child's work. These were pages I created that the students filled in on their own today. This was probably one of the few times in the year that I'll tell them "Don't put your name on it!"

Then, the parents sign in and take a bag of popcorn as a thank you. On the back of the student work, there were directions such as "Have your child show you our centers." This allowed the parents and kids to interact while the students showed them around the room.

How do you set up Open House for your students and parents?