Question for those that have been pre-school Room Moms/Dads

[janeybwild]

I am the Room mom for Megan’s preschool class. My understanding of the “job� is a little hazy. Here’s what I think I should do for the year based on my conversations with the teacher and another mom who did it.

Help (or arrange help) for a few special classroom days (like picture day)
Help organize parent volunteers for the 3 school outings
Organize and post sign up for the various classroom parties
Organize a get-to-know-you parent coffee morning
Organize group holiday and end-of year thank you gifts for the teachers
Mark teacher appreciation day? (not sure about when that one is)

Is there anything else I’m missing/would be nice to consider?

[egoldber]

I was one of the room moms for DD's preschool class last year. That's pretty much what I did. But her school had a Room Parent Committee (I think it met once or twice at the very beginning) and we just basically did what they told us LOL!!

The other thing I did was set up monthly coffees after the first one. It was nice because sometimes you can't make one coffee, but you can the others. And the moms actually appreciated the on-going ability to see and talk to each other outside of school to be able to get and give feedback about how the school year was going.

We did Teacher Appreciation Day as part of the Week of the Young Child which is sometime in the spring. I forget exactly when.

[janeybwild]

Thanks Beth. That's reassuring. I like the idea of a monthly coffee morning, and I won't worry about teacher appreciation day until Spring!

BTW, good luck on the home stretch here. I know you said you were ready for this to be over, but hang in there. Thinking of you :)

[jamsmu]

Wow! You're busy. We're pretty lucky in that all of the events are signed up for at the PTO breakfast. There's a big posterboard and them moms write their names under the parties and activities they are signing up for--so that my only job was to confirm that they could still come, then find alternates if someone's plans had changed.

Yes, collect for the class gifts. And we made a class scrapbook at the end of the year. (We used picaboo.com, so that the parents bought one for each teacher, and then could also buy one for their child.)

And, like Beth, we organized several breakfasts. Usually, we just met for coffee and danish at a local coffee shop. Which reminds me... we need to organize our first for this year!

[janeybwild]

Thanks Julie. I like the idea of a pre-sign up. No reason why I couldn't do that and ask each parent to sign up for something so it doesn't all fall on me. Great idea.

[egoldber]

We just posted a sign up sheet about 2 weeks before each class "event" and had the parents sign up at that time for whatever they wanted to bring for the party. We actually listed the items to being and they just signed their name next to whichever thing they said they were going to bring.

The worst part was collecting money for class gifts. I hate asking for money, LOL, so the other mom and I split up the room mom duties. She did all the money stuff and I did all the party stuff. I ended up doing the coffees too, but that was easy since I just did it all via e-mail. And was more like "Hey! Lets try to meet up at Einstein Bagel after drop-off next Friday. Hope to see you there!"

[KCR4]

I'm a new room mom at my sons' Montessori school. I'm glad you posted this!

So far, I organized the class email group for future notifications and confirmed everybody was using email so I could reach folks. I also provided a light breakfast before the first parent-teacher conferences (paid for by the parent organization of the school). (School where we are in Texas started early Aug so we just had our first conference day.) The teachers really seemed to like this. Less formal than the usual teacher appreciation meal - just self serve platters in the teacher kitchen, which I cleaned up for them and made coffee, etc.

I like the idea of a picaboo scrap book. I don't know how to use it but will figure it out before year-end.

I browsed online for teacher gift ideas and came across this one---the students were all assigned a letter of the alphabet for their teacher's birthday gift. They brought an item for their letter eg "m" brought muffin mix, "s" brought soap, etc. The kids had to think a bit about their letters - the gifts were small - the room mom passed out brown paper bags to emphasize that gifts were to be small and the letter was written on the bag. Seemed neat. I might try that.

Last year's room mom had all the kids do a fingerprint on a large platter for a teacher's bday, then took it to a "pottery paint" store. She decorated it with their names and the class info and little designs around the edges. I loved this idea but am not crafty. I might pay a pottery artist to do an oversize mug or something - not with fingerprints but with their names this year.

Two years ago, at church preschool, I gave my son's teacher a copy of the children's book "Bread and Jam for Frances" (for the classroom), along with a gourmet loaf of bread from Whole Foods and gourmet organic jam (those were for her!). She loved this idea, so I may try something along those lines again....need to get thinking about other book ideas too.

I know collecting money and giving a SuperTarget gift card is boring, but it certainly might be welcome. I will have to think about it --

Any other ideas? For activities or gifts ---
ps one former room mom told me to keep a phone list for class parents in the car. in case of an ice emergency early closing - something like that - where I'm contacted to contact everybody in my class - good to have a second copy of the class list/numbers in the glove compartment!

Karen
DS #1 7-01
DS #2 10-03
DS #3 7-06

[jamsmu]

We gave the teachers Amex gift cards. Very boring... but you can't go wrong with those!

Picaboo--very easy!! A little slow, so be prepared. I asked each mom to send 1 or 2 individual shots of their child, plus any shots they had from the classroom during the year. Then I did:

cover: class composite of class photos
page 1: a picture of each teacher
page 2: a large, full-size scan of the composite
pages 3-19: one page for each student with 3 pictures per page. Usually I had one indiv. shot from home, one classroom action shot, and one group shot with a few kids, including the "featured" child. Each page had the child's first and last name on it as well.
page 20: collage of pictures from the year.

[jamsmu]

I hate collecting money, too! For some reason, I had $35 in my pantry for the class from December - July. I finally handed it off in July! I won't do that job again!