Now that you have your classroom set up, you finally got your hands on your class list and have labeled ALL the things with student names, what’s next? Are you ready to meet your students? Because they are SO ready to meet you! I don’t know how you feel, but this is one of the most stressful and exciting parts of the whole year for me. You get to meet a lot of your kiddos and usually their entire family! I hope that after reading this, you feel more prepared and excited about meeting all your sweet littles!
Let’s talk about why meet the teacher is important first. Think about when you were growing up and you finally got to find out who your new teacher was and see your new classroom for the first time. It’s a pretty special moment that should be cherished. Meet the Teacher is such a special time for you to bond with your students. You get to see them outside a school environment with their family. Depending on your school, sometimes this was the only time I would get to meet my student’s parents and it was so important to get off on the right foot then and there. To set the tone. But how can we make this overwhelming time special and at the same time, take some of the pressure off? I have one word – stations. I started doing stations last year and it was the BEST thing I did! The students and their families had such a blast and it gave me so much more time to go around and meet everyone and talk to them, all while they had activities to do! Everyone was prepared with a checklist to make sure each family made it to each of the fun stations! You’ll find my Editable Meet the Teacher Stations HERE and I’ll take you through some of the fun activities we had going down in our room. Check out the pictures of each station too!
1. A Photo Booth! This station was a hit! They had such a blast with the back to school props and some parents were already sending heir pictures to me on Dojo. This was such a fun way for families to have fun together and create some great first memories in their new classroom. I LOVE using the props from Teach Create Motivate.
2. QR Codes! Another station my parents adored was a station where they could grab a QR code to use at home. When they scanned the code it would direct them to a video of me reading “The Night Before First Grade” to my students. I told them to listen to it the night before school started. When parents dropped of their students the first day of school, I had SO many parents tell me how much they loved that I did that for their child. I also had so many students that ran up to me telling me how excited they were that they got to see me read to them! I love using these editable tags from Missing Tooth Grins.
3. Ready Confetti! My students loved this little gift so much. They got to take home a bag of confetti so that they were “ready” for school to start. This is such a fun FREEBIE from Miss Hellen’s Hippos that was pretty easy to assemble. I bought some confetti from Michael’s and put it in a plastic bag. Then I just stapled the tag to the top and that was it! Super easy inexpensive gift that the kiddos absolutely loved!
4. All About Me Bag! This includes a great get to know you activity that gets things super personal. Each student receives a paper bag to take home and is instructed to put 3 things in it that represent them. Then they bring it back to school when school starts and they can share their items with a friend. It is such a fun way to get to know your kids and a great soft activity for the first week of school. I even did one too so my students could see my interests. If you subscribe to my blog, you’ll receive these adorable directions tags to add to your bags for FREE!
These are just some of the fun stations ideas you’ll find in my Editable Stations Resource. You’ll also find a checklist for families to use during the meet the teacher time. Not only was this a fun and exciting experience for everyone, but it was a great way to start building connections right away and took some of the pressure off at back to school time!
Stay tuned to learn about some of my absolute favorite read alouds for the first week of school! Don’t forget to subscribe to my email list! You will get the most up to date tips, tricks, and classroom projects… and of course more fun FREEBIES including the All About Me Bag FREEBIE! If you would like to learn about this and other things happening in my classroom follow me @sweetnsauerfirsties on Instagram.
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