It's a Wrap!

Yep, it's a wrap. My school year is over. To be truthful I've been out of school for a week enjoying taking it easy during the day and not having a schedule. I love summer! (just had to say that).

 This was a great year! Nice class, sweet & motivated kiddos. They were so much fun. So I tried to make our last day together full of fun activities. I called it Bubble & Ice Cream Day. We started with one of my favorite end of the year books. Throughout the year we've read other Diane deGroat books so it's fun when this book references things that happened in the other books.

I needed a few minutes to organize ice cream toppings parents dropped off so we watched this video of Splish, Splash, Splat. read by Molly Ringwald. It's such a cute summer story!

Then we went outside with bubbles and frisbees and played on the upper grade playground- a true treat for first graders since they have swings!

We came back inside and painted the desks with shaving cream. First graders LOVE this! I start with quick instructions about not putting shaving cream on anything but the desks, just to save us from having shaving cream on our faces, in our hair, ... you can imagine.

After that the kids have recess. My mom comes to help on the last couple of days and recess gives us time to clean up. The desks are nice and clean after this and the room smells good too.

One of my end of the year gifts to my students is a beach ball which they get to autograph. I love the reaction as I throw beach balls out to the kids. Everyone gets a sharpie marker and off they go!

This year the kids finished signing beach balls about 10 minutes before we were going to have ice cream with another 1st grade class. I wasn't quite sure how to fill the time when Mr. Heath walked in to drop something off to me and it solved my problem. I love this picture of him getting mobbed by my students for his autograph too!

After that we had ice cream sundaes and I let the kids play on the playground for a bit when they finished. At 11:15 parents came to watch our end of the year slide show.

After some tears and lots of smiles, it was time for the kiddos to go home. On the way out the door one of the girls looked at me and said, "I'm going to cry when I get home," which, of course, brought tears to my eyes again. I hugged her and told her I hoped she would go home and do something fun and that I'd see her next year.

I miss my sweet class. But I am thoroughly enjoying staying up late, sleeping in a bit, and taking it easy. Tomorrow a group of teachers from my school and my principal head off to Disneyland for the Courageous Creativity Conference. Not much is published about it and we won't know what sessions there are until we get there. I do know there are behind the scenes tours, which I'm really looking forward to. If there's any great information to pass along, I'll post about on the weekend.

Thanks for reading! I hope you're having a great day whether you're still teaching or already on vacation.