1-2-3 Come Make A Take Home Folder With Me!

My friend and I were sharing. She was excited about making snail mail - take home folders for her students.

Janet can't remember where she got this adorable idea (Pinterest? A teacher magazine?) but the word snail is an acronym for Student work, Notes, And Important Letters.

She wanted to know if I could whip something together to glue to the cover of her folders.  I LOVED the idea & revamped the acronym to Schoolwork, Notes And Important Letters. 

Since I sent a folder home every Friday with my students, which was filled with their work, my weekly newsletter and other correspondence from our school, I thought 'snail mail' was an adorable idea, so I got right to work.

Take home folders were my easy and very successful "life line" for parent-teacher communication, so I highly reccommend doing them. 

Parent feedback was also extremely positive, as they weren't constantly hunting through a messy backpack for news.  I kept the folders in a basket along with anything that needed to go in them, and had a room helper "stuff" the folders sometime on Friday.

Besides the child's name on the folder, I numbered them so they could be put back in order quickly.  This expedited finding a specific child's folder to put their work in.  School pictures as well as report cards were also sent home via this folder.

I explained to parents the importance of making it a habit to take out their folder every Friday and go through it, praising and commenting on their child's work and perhaps choosing a few to hang up on the fridge, a bulletin board or cupboard door. 

Children also enjoy giving special papers to family members.  All of this promotes self-esteem.  By your interest, your child sees the importance of school and that you care about what they are learning there.

If parents tuck the folder right back into their child's pack, it will be ready for school on Monday.  Click on the link to view/download the Snail Mail Take Home Folder Packet.

I've included black and white as well as colored snail labels, along with a reminder and note of explanation to parents. 

This packet will be FREE for an entire year, then it will be revamped and included in "Diane's Dollar Deals" in my TpT shop. 

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN anything you think others may find helpful. My pin it button is at the top.

"Never tell people how to do things.  Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." -George Patton

Web Quests:

Our school wanted our students to be more computer savvy so I designed "Web Walkers" last year. All of the children who had computers at home enjoyed it. It was basically a contest to get children interested in doing more educational things on the computer. We had planned to run it all year, but enthusiasm died out about the end of December so we informed our parents with our Christmas newsletter that our "contest" would end then. In a nutshell it's simply sending your kids on safe "Web Quests!" sort of like a treasure hunt through the Internet.

My co-teacher and I would spend some time checking out kidsites on the net and finding fun, but educational things for them to do that would relate to our standards and give them several options to do. The child with the most things done would be our Web Master for the month.

Click on the links to see our September & October Web Quests, Certificate, and direction Letter Home. 

This is a picture of our hallway bulletin board display where we set it all up. We would tape up the children's work as they handed it in. Passer's by were very interested, and parents really supported the project.

We also had a competition going between my class and the other Y5 class to see who had the most Web Quests each month.  The posters hanging from the ceiling displayed the photo of  the Web Walkers of the Month from each of our classes.  The students' work hung around the display. The board in the middle posted what the Web Quests were. This was the internet sites that we sent home to the parents at the beginning of each month. We even had other teachers and parents of children not in our class ask us for copies so they could do it with their children! As you know you can really waste a lot of time surfing  the net for safe and educational sites for your students.  

The rectangle on the bottom is a key board. The posters on either side are graphs of each of our classes. The graphs were a great math extension.

I added a "Do you have a computer at home?" and "Does your child know how to use it? " questions on my "getting to know your child"question form that I handed out at the beginning of the year. Click on the link for a copy. So that parents who did not have a computer at home, but wanted to participate, didn't feel left out,  we let them know that we would be going to the computer lab and that they could come before or after school and work with their child. No one opted for this in either of our classes. We also gave the assignment sheet to our computer teacher but he didn't have time to visit the sites either.

If there is an interest in this, let me know and I will post November and December Web Quests. Also check My Favorite Kid Links on our home page. Click on the link to go there. HOME Are your schools pushing you to do more computer work with your students too? Take a moment to comment!

We discovered that a webquest was a wonderful way to get parents involved and our students more computer saavy!