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End of the School Year!

I can't believe that it is already Summer!  Like all teachers know... it was such a whirlwind of emotions during our last week. I was up and down and all over the place. Everything happened SO fast and just like that it was all over. I am super sad to lose all the kids in my class this year, but I know they're going to do great in third and I'm looking forward to a great new class of kiddos in the fall... Oh and summer of course!

 SUMMER!! 

So far... I've been enjoying sleeping in, reading and catching up on some of my favorite shows. I've gone to the pool, and gotten my nails done! It was a much needed break. Next week... I'll start Summer school, but I'm looking forward to a few more weeks of summer after that! 

But if you're wondering how my crazy last week went, then you're in luck! Here is the schedule below! :) 

Monday: We performed our Fractured Fairy Tale plays, and shared our Fractured fairy tale stories with the Kindergarten. It was a great end to our Fairy Tale unit. More to come on that later. ;) 

Tuesday: We had our end of the year Jiji party!! I was so proud of my class! Our class average made it all the way to 98% in ST MATH! So to celebrate we got free time to play and use any of the academic games in the classroom or on the iPad for one whole hour! It was a perfect time for me to pull down some of those bulletin boards and organize some of the drawers in my classroom that may or may not have gotten crazy during the year. A few of my girls even helped me! One little girl actually sat for 15 minutes picking out those little crayon papers out of our crayon bucket! I don't know about you, but those pieces drive me crazy. She was so sweet. It was great! 

Wednesday: Wednesday was our school's grubby day. We started by visiting our 5th grade buddies and saying goodbye to them. Below you can see the buddy cards we made them. Then we got a special end of the year cupcake treat. You gotta love the adorableness of Pinterest. I found these cute sun cupcakes and teddy gram beach cupcakes the night before and I don't know if I was on an end of the year adrenaline kick or what, but I just couldn't resist making a quick trip to the store for supplies. :)

After eating the cupcakes, we had one more grubby day surprise before we had to get to work cleaning. We played with shaving cream! We wrote some of our favorite second grade memories in shaving cream! We practiced our cursive and we wrote silly notes to our classmates. It was so much fun! 

Then we cleaned out our desks, clorox wiped the entire classroom and moved all the desks and boxes to the side. It was a great grubby day! 

Thursday: On Thursday, we had our school's field day. We played tons of games and enjoyed the beautiful sun outside! I got to kick back and enjoy my students, while the 7th graders ran the entire thing! What a fun day! 

Friday: On our last day together, we started the day off by reading one of my favorite end of the year books, "Last Day Blues" by Julie Danneberg. I gave my students their end of the year gifts and we went to a beautiful school wide Mass run by the first graders. 

 

After mass, we did my favorite end of the year activity. I've done it now for the last few years and its a great way to look back on what we've learned throughout the year. We call it our end of the year Learning Wall.

 I split the kids into groups and hand them post it notes. Each group is responsible for a different subject. Red was Math, and Pink was Language Arts. Blue/ Teal was Social Studies, the Orange was Religion and the Yellow was Science. The Purple was for other things we learned like being kind to our classmates, and challenging ourselves everyday to make ourselves the best we can be.  

I set a timer and we list what we learned this year on as many post it notes as we can in 20 minutes. It's absolute CHAOS!  But like the GOOD kind of chaos. The kind we're they're so excited and they're screaming at the top of their lungs because they're remembering things and talking about it with each other. They're writing as quickly as they can, and running to the board, while I stand on a chair and frantically stick them to the front board in our classroom. If you're trying to picture my classroom as this time, I promise we looked ridiculous! My principal even came in this year in during chaos and just laughed and joined in by cheering us on as we worked. 

But the Chaos is worth it!!!

The end result is this amazing visual representation of our year... this incredible board where they can see how their brains have grown in the last 10 months and how hard they've worked to get where they are. You should see how proud they are of themselves. It's just awesome. 

I'm not gonna lie... I get pretty excited to see everything I've taught them during the year too! Often times as teachers, we work so hard during the year that we forget to take the time to sit back and reflect on what we've done. Thank goodness we have some time during summer to do that! 

Bring on the reflection! :)