The end of the year can sneak up on you and it can be a sad and yet exciting time for the kids as well as us teachers. Here are some things I do to wrap up the year and send my kids off for the summer.
Countdown:
One of the first things I do to start winding down the year is start up an end of the year countdown. I write it up on my board and I have a child change the count each day. I’ve seen teachers that put balloons up somewhere in their room and pop one each day in the countdown. Next year, I would like to give that a try, but Expo marker did the trick this year 🙂
EOY Meeting:
An EOY meeting is one of my favorite moments of the year. This is a good time to reflect on everything that we learned and share exciting times we shared. Once we have completed this, I show our EOY slideshow.
This is a good time to capture our memories in writing! This is when we complete our “Owl-ways Remember” writing and craft. Crafting craft available HERE.
*I forgot to take pictures of this activity this year, so these pictures are from one of my past classes.* |
End of the year gifts:
I always have given gifts and they’ve varied from a favorite book we read together, buckets filled with goodies/activities for the summer, sunglasses etc. The past two years I gave my kids water bottles. One of the things I felt sad about was the fact that I gave them away and never got to see my kids enjoy their gifts, so this year I passed them out on the Monday of the last week of school. I used my Cricut to cut out my students’ names with permanent vinyl. Each child chose their bottle color and I quickly put their name on it while they ate breakfast. I’ve never seen such excited kids! They wanted to take their bottles with them everywhere they went! And I have never seen children drink so much water in my life! This is definitely a gift I will have to recreate next year. (These particular bottles can be found at the 99 cent store.)
Awards:
Every year I want to make EOY awards, but never get to it. This year I was determined to create some and thank goodness I got my hands on Molly’s Marvelous Medallions! I was able to create a medallion for every single child. They wore them proudly!