Made it Monday 8*1*16

In last weeks Made It Monday post I shared about the welcome gifts I made for my students for Open House/Meet the Teacher. This week I want to focus on their parents.

After scouring Pinterest I ran across this cute idea from The Lemonade Stand. "Parents Like You Are So Refreshing!" All I need to do is get some mini water bottles, Country Time lemonade packets and string and they'll be ready to go. You can download a copy for yourself on her blog.

 Also waiting for the parents is the Parent Flipbook I made them. Last year I gave this to parents during Back to School Night, but this year since that night comes 3 weeks after school starts, I wanted parents to have a preview of our classroom from the very beginning. Most of this information is included on our classroom website but last year I found that very little of my parents actually took the time to read up about our classroom. They had many questions that could have been answered if they had just looked at the website!

If you haven't seen Learning in Wonderland's Back to School Flipbook Templates then you don't know what you're missing! This is the neatest little thing I've ever purchased. She even included a step by step video on how to customize it and print it. I created something like this in the past but it was "old school"... a lot of cutting and pasting and copying until it lined up right and even after all that... it still didn't!

Since I'm passing out the flipbook at Open House/Meet the Teacher this year, I needed something for Back to School Night. In comes the Parent Handbook. I got the idea from Primarily Speaking. She included a copy in her Back to School Forms, since I only needed the handbook portion, I created my own. In this handbook parents will find detailed information about:

• classroom communication
• behavior plan
• homework policy
• grading
• assessments
• cultivating leaders
• celebrations
• daily schedule

So what do you give your parents at Open House/Meet the Teacher and Back to School Night?

Looking for more Made it Monday ideas? Hop on over to 4th Grade Frolics!