Every year, about 2 days before school starts, the PTSA sponsors an Ice Cream Social for all Carriage Crest Families. You and your children can come to the school, meet your teachers for the year, and catch up with friends out on the playground while enjoying some ice cream. Check the calendar for the date during the Summer.

This committee handles the PTA membership drive at the beginning of the year. We are striving for 100% membership! To purchase a PTSA membership online, click here.

About once a month, the Staff Appreciation committee puts together a lunch, dinner, or other event designed to give our wonderful teachers a treat. In the past this usually includes providing dinner on the night the teachers have evening conferences, a cookie exchange in December, and even a Cinco de Mayo luncheon in May. We are always in need of folks who are willing to bring a pot of soup, a salad, or otherwise help out as we show our teachers and staff how much we appreciate the wonderful job they are doing for our kids!

Our Outreach program includes many activities throughout the school year, many of which involve the students directly. In the past we have done drives for food, clothing, and school supplies. There is a Giving Tree each year during the holidays so our community can donate needed items and/or gifts for needy families.

We also support two programs run by the Kent Area Council, which is our School district-level PTA: Cinderella's Closet provides formal wear for students to use for Prom and other high school events when they cannot afford their own, and the Clothing Bank helps families in our district with everything from school supplies and backpacks, to new underwear, to new coats when they cannot afford them.

We are hosting a silent auction, and dessert buffet for parents in conjunction with a movie night for the kids. Please come and support our school!

Carriage Crest PTSA sponsors two book fairs each year. Scholastic Books delivers books for all ages to purchase, and all the profits go directly to benefit the library or to purchase books for the classrooms.

Register your credit cards/Safeway card with eScrip and participating merchants contribute each time you make a purchase. For example, Safeway will be donate 10% of your purchase of participating products to Carriage Crest PTSA every time you shop using your card.

Any time you donate directly to PTSA, you may be eligible for gift matching by your employer. Check with your employer for restrictions or minimum amounts.

Students may send in box tops to their classroom PTSA folders. Our school receives 10 cents per valid box top. Please check expiration dates!

Labels off many items, including Campbell's soups, may be sent in to your student's classroom PTSA folder, labeled with their name and teacher. Small prizes are usually sent home as thank-yous. Labels earn our school points, which the Soup Label chair is able to redeem for various items for the school. In the past these items have included electric pencil sharpeners for the bays, and playground equipment such as balls and jump ropes.

Products which are eligible for label redemption in the program include:
Campbell's soups, Supper bakes, or other canned goods such as beans or pasta
Franco-American Spaghetti-O's canned pasta
Prego Pasta sauces
Swanson broths and canned poultry
V8 brand items
Pepperidge Farm brand items

Carriage Crest Coyotes have the opportunity to earn prizes for their at home reading.

This committee involves finding classes or forming clubs for students to participate in after school hours. Suggestions have included a chess club, art classes, a science class, and so on. The chair needs to schedule a class, coordinate student sign-ups, and make sure fees are paid. For something like a chess club, there may be no fees involved, but simply a set time for students to get together and play chess or learn about it. Anyone who is interested can send email through the website.

Arts in our schools over the last couple of decades has steadily declined. The funds and training are harder to come by, and teachers are forced to spend more time on core curriculum. The Art Docent program is designed to send someone into each classroom at least once a month to lead the students in an art activity. These range from painting and drawing to collage, even occasionally other media such as clay or shaving cream. Please consider lending a hand in a classroom this year, to make sure our students still have an outlet for some of that great creativity they have!

The Carriage Crest PTSA Science Fair is held each year during Open House in March. All students are invited to participate by entering a science project.

The Reflections Program is a National PTA and Washington State PTA cultural arts competition. Each year, Reflections challenges students to create art that supports a specific theme, which is selected from thousands of ideas submitted by students to National PTA's Reflections Theme Search. A student may submit an entry in any or all of four arts areas: Literature, Music Composition, Photography, and Visual Art. Washington State PTA offers two additional areas which are judged at the state level, but are not sent on for further judging. Those areas are Film/Video and Choreography/Dance.

Entries are judged on creative ability and interpretation of the theme.

Math Mania is a math enrichment program. More details on the new internet program coming soon.

The website should have up-to-date information on programs, fundraising activities, and any other information we feel may be useful to our community. If you have questions or would like to see something here, please email our website coordinator here.

This is a monthly newsletter that includes news about the school, PTSA, district and community. It is published once per month. The committee chair will gather the articles on a monthly basis and arrange the newsletter in a reader friendly format. The committee chair is responsible for establishing deadlines, editing content, and converting the finished newsletter into an Adobe PDF file format for electronic distribution and web posting. The September Howler will be distributed by paper; subsequent editions will be electronic only. Paper copies may be available on request for families with no email or web access.

The Monster Mash Bash is a harvest party for the entire school! Usually on or near the last Friday of October, this highly-attended event includes games, treats, a haunted maze, and a costume contest. It is one of Carriage Crest PTSA's most popular family events.

One of the most visual roles of the PTSA is to offer events that bring families together for inexpensive entertainment with other families. For the sake of safety, students are required to attend with an adult for all family events. These events have varied over the years, and may include Dances, Movie Nights, a Spring Carnival, and our annual Monster Mash Bash.

Our volunteer coordinators keep a database of anyone who would like to help out on a case-by-case basis. If a teacher or a committee chair needs help with a project, an email is sent by the coordinator to everyone on their list, and those who are willing and available for the date and time in question can respond accordingly. Signing up to help with this committee does not obligate you to any specific duty or position; it is simply a contact list when helpers are needed.

Helps make popcorn on 1-2 Friday's each month. Starts in the morning and ends after lunches are over. Fun, fun!!

Coordinates the sale of Carriage Crest shirts 2-3 times each school year.

WATCH D.O.G.S. (Dads Of Great Students) is an innovative father involvement, educational initiative of the National Center For Fathering. Those volunteering for WATCH D.O.G.S. commit to a time that works for them to come and volunteer at Carriage Crest. They can volunteer in classrooms, help out in the library, join a P.E. class, and/or have lunch with the kids.