Preschool is a special time of development for young children, that’s why we love involving their family when possible.
Various times throughout the school year we hold special events that allow the families of our students to become involved. These events usually revolve around holidays and significant dates on the calendar. They are always a joy to put together. Seeing the happy hearts of the students and their loved ones makes all the prep work worth it!
Holidays
In October we like to do a Family Fall Festival. This is a morning where we set up fall games and activities for children to do with their parents and siblings. We have hot cider and a few snacks available. One year we even had the parents pitch-in and bring their own snacks! Last fall, instead of the festival, we took a field trip to a local apple orchard – that was a blast!
Before everyone leaves for winter break, we like to do a class gift exchange and pajama party! This specific event is a student-only one, however, we have the parents help their child pick out and wrap a gift for another student.
Another few holidays that we love celebrating at our preschool are Mother’s Day and Father’s Day! Each day is special in its own way. For Mother’s Day, the children make gifts and help prepare the classroom the morning of! Once moms arrive, the students have a musical presentation and then are dismissed to spend some time with their moms.
Father’s Day is a bit more relaxed. For this event we like to have everything prepared beforehand, that way they can get straight to breakfast and then outside to play games!
Significant Calendar Dates
In addition to holidays, we have a few extra special events we like to hold throughout the school year. The first being Grandparents Day! Grandparents Day is a day when we invite any grandparent to join us for a portion of the school day! The grandparents are invited to come read with their grandchild’s class, sing songs, help with snack, or play outside.
The next “extra” special event we invite the family to be apart of is Star of the Week. Star of the Week is when each child brings in a poster they’ve prepared with their favorite pictures and then they share a little bit about themselves. After their presentation, the child picks either their mom or dad to come read a story to the class.
Lastly, our grandest event of the year, Graduation! Myself and Deborah do all the prep and set up for this special night. It’s a night where we honor our graduating PreK students before they head off to Kindergarten in the fall. Anyone in the family is invited to participate in this event and join in the celebration.
Things to consider
- Have fun! These days are also about you being able to build a relationship with your student’s family too!
- Keep things simple! Don’t wear yourself out planning a huge event if you only have the time and resources for something smaller.
- Don’t forget, the children will be over the moon no matter what their family member comes in and does that day, even if it’s a short visit at snack or a simple book reading!
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