It’s That Time of Year..Are You Prepared???

I will answer that for myself…

NO.

I was never prepared.  I was always SHOCKED that it was time for the holiday party!  With collecting the last bit of grades, filling out report cards, making parent gifts, I was always behind.

So let’s share today..how do you

Luckily, about 3-4 years ago my co-teacher and I stumbled across the best kind of party.  Easy to enough organize and  made the parents, kids, and ourselves happy! So today, I am sharing all that goodness!

First trick:  we did our party first thing in the morning.  I know this sounds counter productive.  Normally you wait to the end of the day and send them on the bus to be all crazy and sugared up.  See, we did it FIRST thing and let parents check them out afterwards. I can’t believe I just typed that. Should I delete it?  We usually did a breakfast and then some years we also did gingerbread houses at another time.

But seriously, we did a breakfast party and were able to incorporate more healthy treats and a bit less sugar.  Sausage and bacon don’t usually hype kids up and we threw in some fruit to make it a bit more healthy.

I have sent home parent letters two different ways in our class (depending on the class).  We either assigned items to bring OR we asked parents what they wanted to send in.  Both ways worked.  Here is a sample letter of how we assigned and WHAT we assigned for breakfast and gingerbread houses:

Tomorrow I will share some activity ideas for the party on the cheap!

So, are you ready?!?!

Mandy Gregory

Mandy Gregory is a 2007 and 2012 Teacher of the Year. She has taught Kindergarten- 4th grades in both the general education and inclusion settings. She is currently a 1st grade Special Education teacher.  She is the owner and creator of Mandy’s Tips for Teachers website (www.mandystipsforteachers.com) and has over 13 years of teaching experience. She is married with two beautiful children.