Open House in Pix & Freebies!

Whew! Open House is Over! I stress myself out over Open House every year. I learned recently that some states up North call it Back to School night and then they have a different event called Open House at the end of the year. Just don't want to confuse any of my Northern peeps. If I succeeded in confusing you now, then my apologies! My brain might still be a bit scrambled from getting this all together...

So starting in the hallway before you come in, are two displays of student work. One is my What's in a Name Glyph bulletin board.  This one is my number one seller on TpT!

I also had a simple backpack glyph hanging on my cork strip. I only had about 10 school days with the kids before Open House, so I couldn't get too fancy schmancy with the projects. 

The glyph above comes from this book that you can find on Amazon. It actually has really cute and easy glyphs for just about every season or holiday. It makes for a great fall-back resource when you need something up for a new month with the quickness! You can download the glyph key I made to go along with it {HERE} from Google Docs.

Next, right inside the door is my new Wall of Fame bulletin board. I have wanted to do this forever! I'm going to use it to keep track of various student accomplishments during the year.

We have a superhero theme this year. The Mystery Word of the Day is fantastic and you can find it here on TpT from Hello, Mrs Sykes.You might think it looks a little pricey, but it is a year-long activity and each week contains 5 days worth of printable pages.

Just under that bulletin board is my cubby from Lowes. I finally made labels to attach to the bins which I've been meaning to do since I got the cubbies last year! You can download them too from GoogleDocs {HERE}. You'll need Powerpoint to open it. Those labels on the pencil cans are just something I whipped up from graphics from LetteringDelights.com. I don't have permission to share those (their licenses are kind of expensive!) but I may cave and buy that one soon so I can share the labels for a big pencil post I'm working on.

The project I had on the kids' desks was one I've used for a few years now. It's a two-pocket folder that I open up and then fold each edge to the middle making a cute little portfolio. It's a version of a lapbook and I think it makes a nice presentation. Again, with only a few days to work with the kids, I did the best I could!

Most of the stuff inside and the cover are from this book. I'm a big fan of this whole series.
In the big back pocket is a letter they write to their parents just telling what they like about 2nd grade so far and the things they want to be sure their parents see in the room. Behind that is a copy of my Helping Hands at School which you can download free from GoogleDocs {HERE}. I tried to make it more generic than the one I actually use but there are such differences between the way every school does things! Hope you can find some way to use it :)

On my window clothesline I had these adorable apples. We wrote about the "core" of the first story we read together Get Ready for Second Grade, Amber Brown. It was a perfect introduction to writing a summary and the display was super cute! I just printed the apples on red and green paper and we wrote the draft together. Did you know that you can cut construction paper to 8.5x11 and it goes right through your printer? It makes for great bulletin board displays! You can get the Core of the Story apple display freebie {HERE} from a brand new tpt seller, Gina! While you're at her store, don't miss the other cute Open House freebies she has up, like the beautiful bookmarks. She's one of my besties, so show her some love :)

Wow, are you still with me?? This is a long post, right? Ok almost done. I actually have a couple other things, but I think I'll save them. I don't want y'all to go cross-eyed on me. On the back bulletin board we had this really cute pencil display from A Cupcake for the Teacher which you can find here on TpT. I made a title for my board to print and cut (so much easier than individual letters!) You can download that free from GoogleDocs {HERE}.

I'm not sure if you can read Daniel's pencil. It says "To be a second grade success I will not hum because it drives the teacher looney tunes." Guess I made my point on that one, ha!

Ok friends, hope you found some useful ideas to start the year off on the right foot!