329: The Best Tips for Planning a Stress-Free Preschool Graduation Ceremony With Allie Guinn

In this episode of Childcare Conversations, you’ll join Kate, Carrie, and guest Allie Guinn as they chat about all things preschool graduation. They share smart tips for planning meaningful celebrations, from picking the perfect timing (spring or August?) to budgeting for those adorable caps and gowns. Allie dishes out her expertise on safety (watch out for those bargain-bin tassels!) and offers resources to make organizing a breeze. 

You’ll feel like you’re swapping stories with old friends—full of laughs, practical advice, and a little nostalgia. Perfect for anyone gearing up for graduation season! 

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Transcript

Kate Woodward Young (00:00)
It is time to celebrate and-

Carrie (00:03)
It's time to

get ready for graduation or it's time to plan for graduation depending on when you're doing your graduation. So today we've got Ali Quinn on and she's been a director so she has been in your shoes and now she's on the other side helping people prepare for graduation and she wants to make this easier for you and

Kate Woodward Young (00:26)
Okay, wait, wait,

wait, wait. I have a question already. Already! My kids are too young to graduate.

Carrie (00:29)
Already?

Okay, that's not a question, that's a statement. And that's not true. Your kids are in their 20s and 30s.

Allie Guinn (00:34)
Thanks.

Kate Woodward Young (00:40)
Okay, I'm a director and I'm thinking, this woman's crazy. My kids are too little.

Carrie (00:45)
Well, I mean, too little to walk across with a stole and their master's degree and all of that. Yes. But you can have preschool graduation. can even, some programs do graduation when ⁓ people graduate from potty patrol ⁓ and they're fully potty trained. I've seen that at schools where it's like, you know, celebrating the, my God, we are done with this nightmare that is potty training a classroom of toddlers.

Kate Woodward Young (00:53)
So are you talking about school graduation?

Carrie (01:15)
I think that's really for the teachers to celebrate all the work that they've done. But most of the time I think in early

Kate Woodward Young (01:20)
think that's the teachers go out to a local

bar, Carrie. I think you missed the, I think that's a, wait, they went out for a milkshake. That's what it was. They went out for milkshakes.

Carrie (01:24)
Ha ha!

Yep.

But I think, I mean, I think that it's a fun thing to do at your program. Not every program does it. And we're not saying you have to, but if you're going to do it, we want you to do it safely, economically, and in a way that is building your brand for your parents and for the community. So.

Kate Woodward Young (01:52)
Okay,

fill in her thunder, let her talk.

Carrie (01:55)
Okay,

Allie, is there anything you want to do as far as an introduction that we haven't already introduced? ⁓

Allie Guinn (02:01)
Hello, I'm Allie and I would like to consider myself an early childhood expert on graduation. I previously was a director of preschool. I was also a teacher, lead infant room teacher, so obviously we're not graduating from there. But now I'm on the other side as a supplier. And so just kind of excited to be here with you ladies.

Kate Woodward Young (02:22)
Well, great. Well, one of the things that we know that we have seen is a trend and I am going to call him out and then we'll tag him in the episodes. But Vernon Mason, when he does a workshop titled 12 way, 25 ways to increase your revenue, one of the things that he talks about in that workshop specifically is related to graduation. And he really encourages programs to move graduation from May

to August and Ali, I'd love to know if you're seeing this trend pop up. And then I think Carrie is going to jump in on maybe why that's important.

Allie Guinn (03:02)
Yeah, absolutely. So as a supplier, I will say we still see a lot of our heavy purchasing in the springtime. A lot of that is due to there's early bird specials if you place early, so financial pieces to that. So we do see those spring celebrators and we do see the August closer to when schools back in session celebrators. So I don't think either way is wrong. It's just a total preference on your institute.

Carrie (03:28)
Okay. So what are some of the, so I'll just sort of talk about the finances and then I've got some more questions on it. so from a financial position, the reason that we reckon we think Vernon's idea is great is that very few of us when we got our graduation, our diploma, we wore our cap. Did we go back to that school for another two or three months?

Allie Guinn (03:39)
Thank you.

Carrie (03:57)
and continue to go to classes. Once you graduate, you done. You might have another week or two because of, you know, scheduling at your school district and when they can do the graduation. But generally, it's in the last week of school. And so every adult has that thought process, my kid graduated, this is the last week of school, they need to do something else after that. And if you do that in May, then those kids aren't going to be with you over the summer.

Allie Guinn (04:01)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Carrie (04:27)
So

we recommend going with the August and that you have to have attended a certain number of the summer weeks in order to participate in ⁓ graduation. You don't have to come to every week because they should be able to have some summer vacation, but you have to have attended most of the summer to be part of graduation. So that's just the finances of it. But what I want to talk to you about is why is it

why do you think it's important or it's a thing that centers should consider doing for the parents and for the wider community, the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, the friends? Why do you think graduation for those kids who are under the age of 18 is a good or a fun thing?

Allie Guinn (05:13)
Yeah, absolutely. So not only is it super adorable seeing them in their caps and gowns, stoles and everything, it's also a good way for centers to be able to market their program. ⁓ Showcase, like these are the things we do, it helps to build community or bringing people, grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents into your facility, whether it's an indoor outdoor ceremony. And it's really setting a tone of what your program stands for. ⁓ It gives a polished look. It's just all together and celebrates the things right like

There's enough negative things in the world. So to be able to celebrate these kids and their achievements and kind of congratulate them as they go on in their education is a fun milestone for everybody.

Kate Woodward Young (05:53)
Well, I love that. so, Ali, I'm just curious because, you know, we get an option to have some stuff on our show notes. Do you have something like a graduation planner checklist on your website that we can share in the show notes for folks so that if you're new to being a director and you're thinking that sounds like a little bit more than just a classroom party, do you have some resources that we can with folks?

Allie Guinn (06:16)
Yeah.

Absolutely,

yeah. So we make some blogs about this. I'm actually currently working on mine for 2026. But yeah, you can check out happygraduates.com and that will show you actually all the retailers that carry our brand and then resources on there for directors as well.

Kate Woodward Young (06:37)
Well, we will make sure that that link is in the show notes and let's talk a little bit about what you're putting in your blog because I always want to know the inside scoop. So this is like the before published version of what's in the blog. So, so give us a little, ⁓ a secret that nobody else knows yet.

Allie Guinn (06:46)
Thank

Yeah.

Carrie (06:50)
you

Allie Guinn (06:56)
Yes, absolutely. ⁓

So the thing when we lay out graduation, if you wait until spring to be like, ⁓ we want to do this and start planning, you're going to be overwhelmed. There's summer chaos, there's fall. And so it's really about just starting in January, February and saying, this is the date I'm going to do. Announce it, make it fun, count down to graduation, and then kind of go backwards. You can even get parents love to volunteer. If you tap into that, they can help too.

So it's really about establishing your timeline early enough where you, it's not an additional thing on your plate. It's just something that's there, right? We already have way over filling plates and just to be able to have parents help or teachers help and get people involved makes the event even more special.

Kate Woodward Young (07:43)
You mean not do it all yourself?

Allie Guinn (07:44)
Exactly, I know it's a wild concept.

Carrie (07:47)
I like that concept.

I like the concept of let's share the wealth as far as responsibility and activities and planning and the budget.

Allie Guinn (07:53)
Yeah.

Yeah,

and people are excited about it.

Kate Woodward Young (07:59)
budget.

Let's talk budget. Because I know that that is, ⁓ Carrie and I gave you some, or Carrie gave you an idea or a reason why you need to do this in August, right? So now you've got those 20 or 30 kids, you've got them for two more months. That's going to make a big difference in your budget. You don't have that huge drop, right? But there's ways to make graduation affordable. I have seen programs charge every parent a fee for graduation.

Allie Guinn (08:15)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Kate Woodward Young (08:28)
I've seen people do it all in-house. A lot of you know that Carrie and I do have kids, right? So I have four kids. And so I went through four of these preschool graduations and I had a different experience at both schools. One school, the school had a classroom set and the other one we had to buy.

the outfits. So talk to me a little bit about the pros and cons of both of those and Carrie jump in because I know you have a theory as well as how your schools did it.

Carrie (09:00)
You

Allie Guinn (09:02)
Absolutely. So happy graduates, a fun thing that we do, we have three different types of fabric. We have an easy mat, which is a full zipper, kind of lightweight. We have a shiny gown, which is a shiny texture. And then we have, it's called a premium mat. And the premium mat has just a Velcro closure. It's a heavier duty fabric, but that allows centers to be able to wash and reuse that year after year. We've tested it out and holds the color.

And so that's an option for the centers that do truly just want to maybe purchase a cap and a tassel to send home with the child as a keepsake and reuse the gown. Otherwise, more, I guess, economic is the Easy Mat or the Shiny. Those are lower as far as budget quality, still outstanding. But those are really meant for if you want parents to purchase, they take it home, they can do what they want with it afterwards.

Kate Woodward Young (09:56)
They can use it in their dramatic play at home, because they can now meet all Harry Potter kids with their own robes. Sorry.

Allie Guinn (09:58)
Exactly. Perfect. Exactly.

Look at that Halloween costume.

Carrie (10:04)
types of wizards, they

maybe they want to be Gandalf, you don't know. ⁓ So, ⁓ so just kind of giving people ⁓ an idea of the price range. So what is the price range for those ones that the parents might purchase to have a set for themselves at home? And we'll just do the low end and the high end. So the the ones that you can have a school set, what are the price points?

Kate Woodward Young (10:07)
Okay, there... Wizards and Witches or something.

Allie Guinn (10:07)
Thank

Yeah, so we are a supplier so it's up to obviously the companies that purchase from us, but we've seen that right now one of our companies that offers this, they're selling the easy mat and the shiny ones for $16.99 for your cap, gown, tassel package that's super affordable. I think I've seen the premium mat around $22. And so it really is

Carrie (10:59)
Okay, so it's not a

huge difference when you're looking to buy one, but if you're looking to buy, if you've got a class of 24, that could be, you know.

Allie Guinn (11:02)
It's not huge. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (11:11)
Yes, but if

Allie Guinn (11:11)
Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (11:12)
buy them one time, if you buy the higher level, you can then use them every year. And again, it really depends on the image that you have for your kids and for your school, right? ⁓

Allie Guinn (11:24)
Yeah.

Carrie (11:26)
And I mean,

that's what I did. ⁓ And I actually, when I bought one of my schools, it came with the caps and gowns. That was part of what I bought. And in retrospect, I should have repurchased because the color of the caps and gowns in no way matched the ⁓ brand colors of her company. I don't know why we had Baby Blue.

Kate Woodward Young (11:47)
great.

Carrie (11:52)
Like it doesn't match any colors we had for the brand ever at any time. And I don't think it ever matched, you know, their company colors, you know, when I bought them, but, ⁓ I didn't know where to get them. wasn't something that was in my Kaplan or, you know, my discount school supply catalog. So I was like, I don't know where to get it. So I just kept using the baby blue ones. ⁓ and

graduated class after class after class in these cute little baby blue caps and gowns. But you can match the colors to your brand colors or at least close to your brand colors by going with a company like yours. You don't have to go with baby blue or black.

Allie Guinn (12:39)
Yes, absolutely. offer like a wide variety of colors in every of the fabrics we offer, so you can. And year after year, you're guaranteed that the color is going to match. If you buy red this year, and let's say you only purchase 12, next year you have 14 and you plan on reusing, purchase red again, it's going to match.

Kate Woodward Young (12:55)
love that. think that like right there, can you give that to every retailer? you know, because, you know, Carrie and I, we have this one blazer that we have that matches. We bought it from the same store, same label, and the colors are just off enough that I'm like, seriously, people like we bought, you know, this is not that complicated, right? But

Carrie (13:00)
Hahaha

Allie Guinn (13:15)
Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (13:20)
I think that that's really, really important. And I'm all about the brand colors and staying with a theme and, you know, finding the suppliers that are really going to work for this event so that you aren't reinventing the wheel every year, right? Find your photographer, find your cupcake maker, find your, you know, whatever you're going to buy and commit to it as this is one of our

events on our calendar, every parent knows it, every parent wants to be involved and can't wait till their kid comes. And I think that's the real important part is that, you know, building that excitement and the kids getting to see and inviting all of the kids. I think the one that my two middle kids did was the one that was ⁓ the most memorable to me because everybody and literally their brother came to this. Like there was no like,

Allie Guinn (13:56)
Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (14:15)
didn't have to buy any tickets. so the grandmas, the great grandmothers, the kids from all of the other classes, the parents from all the other classes. And it was great because it was done literally right at drop off. So everybody was already there. It was like a nine o'clock graduation. It wasn't a separate day. It wasn't in a separate venue. And, you know, they had breakfast tacos. I mean, it was just it was very appropriate for that.

Allie Guinn (14:29)
focus.

Kate Woodward Young (14:44)
program, but it was a little overwhelming as a parent to go, why are there 150 people at my kids preschool graduation? It's preschool graduation, right? But they did a great job bringing in the community and they had a lot of fun. they even had ⁓ kind of reminded me of science fair projects around the back of the room to really showcase what the school did.

Allie Guinn (14:55)
Thank

Kate Woodward Young (15:12)
for those who were new to the school. So, but they invited everybody on their wait list. They invited every class was involved, every teacher, not just Pre-K. So Pre-K is the only one who walked, but.

Carrie (15:23)
Yeah.

Well, and here's like a thought came into my head as we're talking, which is, I think that the graduating parents shouldn't be the ones doing the volunteering because they should be enjoying and hanging out and having a great time. I think the kids who will be graduating next year, their parents should be the primary volunteers. And that actually builds in some stickiness because the parents have seen up close

how cool it is to put together those displays of the child's journey at the school and all of that. So if you've got those rising four-year-olds having those parents be the ones who put together the displays and place the taco order, or if tacos aren't the thing at your neighborhood, if it's bagels, if it's gristle.

Kate Woodward Young (16:14)
mean,

Ellie's in Minnesota. I don't know if they do breakfast tacos in Minnesota.

Allie Guinn (16:16)
Yeah. Right?

Carrie (16:18)
Okay, so if you're

in Minnesota, who's placing the Kringle order from Racine? Who's getting the Kringle in from Racine? ⁓ I know that not all of Wisconsin understands the magic of Racine Kringle, but I do. We had a cousin who ⁓ lived in Racine. She was actually one of the Racine Peaches ⁓ from the baseball team. ⁓ Anyway, so, you know.

Kate Woodward Young (16:24)
Me! ⁓

Allie Guinn (16:26)
hate it.

Kate Woodward Young (16:45)
That's a squirrel. That's

the Women's Professional Baseball League.

Carrie (16:50)
Sorry, that

was a deep cut. And if you haven't seen A League of Your Own, I don't know what to do for you. ⁓ having those four-year-old parents, those three and four-year-old parents doing the planning for that event, I think is a great way to make it so that the parents are going to be like, no, no, no, I want to stay because I want my kids to have that super cool graduation.

Allie Guinn (16:53)
Thanks.

Yeah.

Carrie (17:18)
that those

last kids had. ⁓ Anything you can do like that is a good thing for your long time lifetime value of a customer. And them seeing that you have high quality materials that you didn't make them out of. My preschool graduation was in the 70s. And my preschool graduation, we had paper bag ⁓ gowns that we made ourselves from grocery store bags.

Kate Woodward Young (17:47)
Well, my kindergarten graduation, I can almost one up that they were the angel robes, because it was out of a church program. So they were angel robes. And some of them still had the angel wings attached to the back of them. But I do still, and we won't talk about how old I am, but they've lasted a very, very long time. I still have my little kindergarten cap because well, I am that version of a pack rat.

Allie Guinn (18:01)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Carrie (18:17)
need pictures of that. want pictures. I want you to do a photo shoot with that cap on that you post during graduation season for the rest of your life. That's what I need. A montage of Kate in all of her graduation hats.

Kate Woodward Young (18:17)
I don't have any of my kids.

Allie Guinn (18:27)
Yes.

Kate Woodward Young (18:30)
Okay, I'm like, it's a little...

Like at the time, cause I have one of me at that age or do you want me to put it on as a grownup?

Carrie (18:41)
I want both.

Kate Woodward Young (18:43)
Great. That's what I get. I get to go find that box. Okay. ⁓ I tell my kids, we got to go in the attic and we got to go find my kindergarten box. They're gonna think I have lost my mind. Probably have. So, all right. So, Allie, what else would you like to make sure that everybody knows? I know you said something to me that, ⁓ during our pre-discussion that I thought was really, really important and I don't think it gets talked about enough. So let's talk safety because

Allie Guinn (18:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (19:11)
Seriously,

right? Directors and owners, we're all about making sure that these kids are safe, but we're also all about a budget. And so you gotta know, you gotta be comparing an apple to an apple, not an apple to a rotten banana. And so tell me about those rotten bananas and why they should not be buying that rotten banana. Because it's cheap.

Allie Guinn (19:23)
Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously,

as my previous role as a director, I understand budgets. ⁓ I get it. And so in this role, we kind of saw this trend where we were seeing caps and gowns being offered and popping up more often early childhood ones that were like incredibly low price ranges, right. And we're sitting here thinking, how can you do that? Right? Is this going to unravel on these poor kids as they're standing here? They're walking. ⁓ And so we take children's product safety very seriously.

We test all products that come in or out of our office. We even have our own testing supplies here where we will randomly just pull and make sure that, hey, this is still up to our standards. So we thought we would purchase a few of these other online retailers items and we brought them in and we did kind of some self testing in our own office and found that three quarters of them failed compliance safety. They had small amounts of lead.

in the tassel charms, in the zipper pulls, which you get an anxious child there fiddling with their zipper, maybe putting it in their mouth. That's not great. ⁓ So we ended up sending these to a credited third party laboratory and they did testing and confirmed what we had thought. You're getting these at low price points because they're not meeting and going through all the safety standards that are needed. So this is a very eye opening, not even as a previous doctor, but I'm also a parent and I have small children and I'm like, ⁓ it's just kind of.

makes you stop and think that yes, you might get a good deal, but it's coming at a cost that you might not be aware of.

Kate Woodward Young (21:04)
Wow. Okay. So I'm just going to kind of leave us there. ⁓ I don't know what you say after all of that, but it definitely is something to consider. And I know that a lot of directors and owners don't think about the product safety outside of what the kids probably are playing with in the classroom. Maybe not even necessarily everything they take outside to play with on the playground. And I would suspect that the majority of them never even thought about product safety when it came to.

Allie Guinn (21:08)
Yeah.

What?

Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (21:34)
that graduation celebration item because to them it's a celebration item. you know, the things coming off, the choking hazards, it just got me thinking about the fact that so many of those kids have siblings. And if you do recycle it and take it home and reuse it ⁓ as a parent, do you want this to be an item that falls apart at home? And if you have younger siblings, what happens with those choking hazards? Wow.

Allie Guinn (21:37)
Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (21:59)
Hahahaha!

Allie Guinn (22:00)
I

know it's a heavy thing on a super light subject, but yeah, it just makes you pause and think about it. And so that's what we tell people. Like when you purchase from any of our retailers at Cure Happy graduates, released a safety shield this year. So you could just kind of look at websites and it's super adorable. It has a little boy and girl graduates on it. It's a safety shield that you know that this product we've tested numerous times and it meets every safety standard required.

Kate Woodward Young (22:03)
Yeah, absolutely.

Awesome.

Carrie (22:27)
Okay, so if you are planning your graduation for, you know, the beginning of summer or the end of summer, think about these things. Look at what you already have. If you already have stuff in stock, if you don't, maybe look at getting some and make sure you are making a good choice for your business based on your finances, based on your reputation, your

brand colors and whether you want this to be something that you have a school set of or whether each parent is going to buy their own so that the kids can have it for 49 years. So I'm going to go with the ones made out of paper bags are probably not going to last 49 years and I think

Allie Guinn (23:11)
You

Kate Woodward Young (23:20)
love the

fact that you think it's only been 49 years, so I'm gonna take that one as a win. Because I did the math as you were talking and I'm like, yeah, I'm not gonna correct her, we're just gonna go with that number.

Allie Guinn (23:24)
Thank you.

Carrie (23:33)
So, you know, I think that this is, you know, one of those things where we don't often have episodes that I think are, you know, we have to release them at a specific time, but I think we're doing this at the right time. Doing a podcast about graduation and doing it in September wouldn't make us any sense. So I'm glad we're doing this now when hopefully you are in that planning mode for the end of the school year.

Allie Guinn (23:52)
you

Carrie (24:00)
or the beginning of the school year and when you're going to celebrate those children's journeys with you. ⁓ We have been hearing more and more about people saying families only stay for one year. Well, part of that is your approach to it. And so if you are building in that thought process,

with all of your teachers and with all of your parents that this child is going to stay with you until graduation, you're going to have more of it. Don't think a year at a time. Don't think a semester at a time. Think from now until graduation, from now until graduation or from now until graduation and then school age. And maybe you have another graduation because not all elementary schools do a graduation.

So maybe you do another one with your school agers. I don't know, that could be fun. I like it. I like a good party. Any excuse for a party, I'm down, especially if I can get other people to do the actual work. I like to go to a party. I don't always like to plan a party. So Kate, what do the listeners of today's show need to do?

Kate Woodward Young (25:19)
Well, we would love for you to stay as part of our community. go and go to our website, childcareconversations.com and subscribe to our newsletter. And don't forget to visit the show notes for those great tips and links to blogs and other episodes that we referenced in today's ⁓ conversation with Allie. And with that, we will see you in a few days.