This year the site steering committee at our school decide to combine the Back to School BBQ with Open House Night. The PTO will be heavily involved in the event.
In addition to providing all of the cooks and food for the BBQ, we are also sponsoring a Treasure Hunt game...each student gets a "passport", they must find and get stamps from staff members around the school, when the passport is filled up students recieve their popsicle.
Also, a filled passport becomes a raffle ticket for the parent when they attend the first PTO meeting of the year!
This is our first year for our PTO also. We raised enough money over the summer to purchase our students grades Pre-K thru 6th grade all of their school supplies. We are hosting an Open House 2 days before school starts in the evening. We will hand out the sack of supplies that the students will take to their rooms, put in their desks, and meet their teacher. We are planning on serving watermelon and lemonade in the outdoor classroom and water garden. The students will be allowed to play on the playground and show mom and dad around. We will also set up a table with PTO membership forms and important information on filling out all the paperwork that gets sent home on the first day of school. All of our teachers are very supportive of us, and we are having alot of fun!!!
We do a hot dog dinner and will have bubbles too for the kids to do outside.
Anyone who signs up for our PTA $5 that night receives a 'free' hot dog dinner for their family and it includes chips and a drink. Our membership gets taken care of and noone can feed their family on $5 so it's a good deal. The parents and kids get to meet other parents/kids and drop their stuff off, etc...
We don't make an announcement about this, but we never turn down any child who comes thru line wanting a hot dog, we don't want any kids getting disappointed. [img]smile.gif[/img]
Another school up the road from us does an ice cream one with bubbles and have a great turn out too.
We have a Back to School Bash the week before school begins. Under the great big oak tree we put up easels with the class rosters for each grade. This is the first opportunity for students to find out what class they are in, so it's usually a big turn-out.
Last year we decided to only do popsicles and water. It made it a lot more simple than in years past.
We also have information and sign-up booths for the different activities during the year, including the cafeteria, bus transportation, sign-ups for carnival, teacher appreciation, membership, directory listing.
We have two things, a Welcome BBQ that the PTO sponsors 2 weeks after school starts. We serve BBQ brisket, ensalada, beans, bread and drinks and then ask the families to bring a dessert to share. It's at the school, everyone (staff & families) are invited. We also have information tables with stuff about the community and a PTO table with membership forms, t-shirts, etc. Most of our moms & kids return to their home countries in the summer, this is usually the first time that many of the families can meet up again or for the first time. We have done this for two years in a row and it's a huge success. Then, the school has a more low-key orientation session where you go into the classroom and meet the teachers. They serve a small snack after. Both meets the needs of seeing the school AND meeting other parents and works well for our school. :cool:
It's interesting how different schools do it. We have "Parent Orientations" the day before school starts. You go to one child's class and the teacher talks about what's expected, what they will be doing, procedures, etc. Then you go to the next child's class, etc. This is held in the morning. In the past few years, we added a "Back to School Night" in which the principal talked, we had refreshments and then we just sort of roamed through the school and the teachers just chatted with parents but gave no official "speech". It was reasonably well attended but I wondered how necessary it was since we all the Orientation at the beginning of school. However, most dads don't go to Orientation (sorry to generalize dads) and it's nice to have this Back to School Night for them to come into the school.
Shelly
