Back To School: Unpack Your Backpack!

Hello Everyone!! This is Molly from Miss K's Little Rays! Our theme for this month is Back to School! Does anyone else have mixed emotions on this time of the summer???? Losing our days of being poolside and having some time off but gaining a class full of excited little ones is nothing short of bittersweet! 

As I prepare for back to school, I am getting my plans ready for Unpack Your Backpack! This is an event we have where students get to come to the school before the first day to meet the teacher, bring their school supplies, and in my kinder babe's case, explore the school! I love Unpack Your Backpack because it helps me start to put names to faces of my students, I get to meet and share important information with parents, and it helps me to feel organized!

So how am I setting up UnPack Your Backpack?? 

For starters, I am making stations for students to put their supplies. When students enter the room, I will have numbers on each table. Accompanying the numbers will be a picture of the school tool that will go there (ie: #1 and a picture of pencils). Students will go around the room placing the appropriate school supply with the table it belongs to. One reason I am excited to do this is so I can watch how my new students interact with each other and how they go about finishing this task. It will be a good way for me to informally see their social skills and if they can accomplish getting all of their supplies sorted out!

While the students are working to do this as independently as possible, I will get to talk with parents! I will have a sign in sheet with student and parent names, email, and phone number. This helps me to already get parent contact information in and secure before things get too busy ;) This past year, I wrote a letter for the parents to read and sign that explained how I use social media (Instagram and Blogger) to share what our classroom does throughout the year. I asked written permission from parents to use photographs that feature their students and gave them the links to access so that they could follow and keep up with our classroom. I got AMAZING feedback from that so I will most definitely be bringing that back!! 

I also had a sign up sheet for providing popsicles and ice for the first few weeks of school. Our school is on the not-so-new side and lacks the comfort of air conditioning, so having twenty 5-6 year olds in the beginning of the year with extreme heat= not good!!! Parents loved being able to sign up and I even had parents offer to bring extra snacks, fans, and other school supplies. As parents walked around the room, they read the back to school pamphlet that I used that had all of our school and classroom information.

I love being able to meet the families before school begins because it allows me to really stress the importance of consistent communication and excitement that goes into their child's learning. I love being able to put faces to names and make sure that all questions are answered before the year begins. I am getting a little giddy about this as I type!

Are you ready for school to be back??? Share what you do to get ready for back to school in the comments section! Thanks for checking out my post!!