Saturday, July 16, 2011

Classroom Celebration Tip and a Freebie

Do you celebrate holidays in your classroom with a celebration of some sort?  Do you have parents sign up to donate items or to volunteer their time at the party?  For years, I would put sign-up sheets out at Curriculum Night (early September) for parents to write their name and phone number if they could donate a food item or their time.  Then...when the holiday finally came, I was digging out those sign-up sheets, making tons of calls (I rarely come across a "room mom" that will help out with that kind of stuff), playing phone tag, and getting very frustrated!  A few years ago discovered a FABULOUS site that makes party planning so much easier!  WIKISPACES!  A week before the party is going to happen, I set up a wiki space and email the link to my parents.  They can sign up at their own leisure and I can check on the site to see the progress.  Click HERE to see an example from last year's Winter Celebration.  Next winter, I will just erase the kids' names and resend the link to my new set of parents.  So easy and it's free!  I use wikispaces for every celebration, for parent teacher conference sign up and more.


I was cleaning out my school files and came across my birthday note to parents.  Our school policy is that birthday treats be sent home.  This birthday note explains the rules and suggests what to send in with the birthday child.  If you are interested, click on the birthday girl for a free download. 



5 comments:

carmencita9c said...

SO VERY COOL! Thank you for sharing! I just started a page for my classroom! Can't wait to see who is my room mom in order to share this with her!

Ms. Wold said...

Very cool! I just set up one for my classroom.

✪ Miss W

Miss W Teaches

Sandra Guntorius said...

Thanks love the idea.

Chrissy said...

Thank you! I've never used Wikispaces, but it looks great!

ReadWriteSing

Heather Temske said...

I have also used google docs for this purpose. You just need to be sure they are set to share with anyone who has the link and that you allow others to edit. Since the parents don't need any kind of logon it works well.

As far as the wiki goes, don't forget they can have multiple pages. You could set up one for the year and then just create a page for each activity rather than a whole different wiki for each event. (You can even show only the active page so there isn't any confusion.)

Good luck