Family Projects and Take Home Bags

Family Projects &
Take Home Bags

One of the ways our school family connects with our home families is through take home bags and monthly projects. Some of the bags circulate all year round; others are monthly. Each bag and project is designed so that even the busiest family can participate. A journal is enclosed in each bag and when the bag has visited every family, the journal goes into a book basket, "Books By Our Home Families". This will be the first year that I've had a bag for every month-I hope it works out! Some ideas for the bags are "borrowed and adapted" or "borrowed straight", so I've tried to give credit where credit is due! Please email me if I've missed anyone! Many of the ideas were borrowed or inspired from Sarah Simpson-Thank You Sunshine!

I use the canvas craft bags for the Year Round Bags-I use an iron-on transfer created on the computer for the front of the bag. The monthly bags are gift bags/plastic beach bags from the dollar store-if one needs patching up, we use a little packing tape or I just pick up a new one!
August Take Home Bag	January Take Home Bag
September Take Home Bag	February Take Home Bag
October Take Home Bag	March Take Home Bag
November Take Home Bag	April Take Home Bag
December Take Home Bag (None this month due to so much going on-it also helps the other bags catch up in rotation)	May Take Home Bag
Year Round Take Home Bags
Take Home Bag Tracker (Being "organizationally challenged" I need all the help I can get! Use this to track your bags- fill in the side columns with your children's names. Fill in the top column with the bags you use. Just add a check or date when the child takes a particular bag home)

Family Projects
Summer Before Kindergarten-ME Bags (Families fill a quart-size Ziploc bag with small items to help us get to know their child) August-Make a Book Nook! (Families create a Book Nook in their home-a special place for reading. Each family receives a plain white craft bag with instructions to decorate it and put it in the Book Nook to hold our weekly take home books) Book Nook Letter	January-Happy Birthday to Us! To celebrate the birth of a new year, each family is asked to send in a baby picture along with the story of the day their child was born. January Project Letter
September-"Meet Our Home Families..." class book OR quilt (Each family completes a page with pictures, drawings, cut outs of things that help us get to know each home family) September Project Letters	February-A Letter from Me to You... (Each child receives a stamped postcard and another assigned child. Family works together to write a kind note to the assigned child and mail it)/Optional-Child creates a postcard for his/her own family (Adapted from a Sarah Simpson Original!)
October-"Fact or Fiction?" Book (Each family completes a cut apart book with two facts and two fictional attributes about their child. (Adapted from a Sarah Simpson Original!)	March-Optional Spring Break Journals
November-Turkey Parade (Each family decorates a large, precut turkey; we parade them on the day before Thanksgiving Break)	April-"April Showers Bring Kindergarten Flowers" (Each child receives a packet of seeds; family finds a special spot to plant them together)
December-Family Ornament/Holiday Help Out (Each family decorates an ornament to represent them and their holiday traditions, then we decorate a tree with the ornaments/We sponsor a local needy family and collect for them in lieu of teacher/student gifts) December Project Letter/Gifts Alternative Letter	May-End of the Year Celebration! (Each child takes home a page to create with their families of their kindergarten memories/I create the "ABC's of Kindergarten" with memories for each letter-my gift to each child