The start of the school year is always a whirlwind, with the excitement of the first few days and the hustle of Open House or Visitation events. Whether your Open House takes place before school begins or after the year is already underway, it’s always a big task to coordinate!
Today, I’m excited to share my top 5 tips to help make your Open House or Visitation a success!
Here’s the outside of my classroom! Those adorable little monkeys are actually paper plates from The Dollar Tree—who would’ve guessed? I used a simple bow template to cut out bows from pink paper for the girls and blue paper for the boys. All of my incoming kinders absolutely loved finding their monkey!
When families arrived, they made their way straight to the back of the room, where my guided reading table is set up. Aren’t the signs adorable? The frames were just $1 from IKEA! Here’s a closer look at each of the stations:
I had the grown-ups sign in as soon as they entered. This helped me keep track of who attended the visitation. (Surprisingly, many of my kinders wrote their own names on the “student name” lines!)
Next, the grown-ups assisted the students with a fun scavenger hunt around the room. They had an absolute blast!
Then, the families picked out a teacher information magnet to take home. They all loved the idea of keeping my contact info on their fridge!
Here’s the “Question of the Day” that students answered as the first task on their Scavenger Hunt. Apologies for the glare, but it reads, “Are you excited to start kindergarten?” For task number 2, the students had to find the bathroom and flush the VERY LOUD toilet! After that, they checked out my “Spotted!” bulletin board, which tells all about me. Then, they located their coat hook so they’d know where to hang their backpack on the first day. The Scavenger Hunt wrapped up with students finding their seats. On each table, I left an envelope filled with forms for parents to complete and return to school (photograph permission, class website info, student details, etc.). I also left them some Ready Confetti—one of my favorite new projects for this year!
CONCLUSION
Overall, the Open House/Visitation was a huge success, and it was such a joy to see the excitement on the students’ faces as they explored the classroom and got to know a little more about what’s to come this year. It’s always so rewarding to meet families and begin building those strong connections that will help make the school year memorable and fun. I can’t wait to see all my kinders back in the classroom on the first day of school!
