Meet the Teacher Night and Birthday Straws

Is it me or has this week been flying by??? I can't believe it is already Thursday tomorrow! On Monday we had Meet the Teacher Night and I was a little disappointed that I only had 9 of my parents show up. I guess I was a little spoiled last year that I had all of them there. At Meet the Teacher Night I always give the parents a little folder of information that is ONLY kindergarten information (they get a lot of information from the office and I like to keep mine separate in their kindergarten-only folder). In their folder I give them: 
1. Another copy of the list of supplies they need to bring in
2. A copy of our specials schedule
3. A copy of our gradual entry schedule (we do half of the class one day, and the other half the next day. Both of these days are half days and are HEAVENLY!! I could totally get used to teaching a half day kindergarten!)
4. A form for them to fill out on allergies
5. A "Getting to Know Your Child" form where they can tell me things about their child I may need to know- their likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, things they are afraid of, etc.
6. And most importantly- my Back to School ABC's Handout. This is their "cheat sheet" to kindergarten and some of my parents last year kept it all year so they could refer back to it in January if they had forgotten a policy (like what to do for birthdays, field trips, etc).

Here is a picture of the outside cover of one of their folders and a snapshot of the inside:

Also, this has nothing to do with Meet the Teacher Night, but these are the finished products of my birthday straws I will give to my kids:

They turned out a lot better than I expected! I bought the silly straws at Party City, used a Cricut to make the accordion folded circles, a scalloped punch from Michael's for the colored paper on the front and labels from SchoolGirl Style for the middle circles. I spray painted the clay pot and attached a ribbon I already had to the top. I put a few stickers on the pot to spell out "Happy Birthday" and voila! I can't wait for someone to have a birthday so I can start giving them away!! All in all I think the whole project cost me about $15- I was lucky that I already had most of the supplies in my craft basket (which is really two baskets that are overflowing and in desperate need of a third!). They were not hard to do and I was able to knock them all out while sitting on the couch watching a movie. Not too shabby, eh? ;)

Hope you're all having a great week!!