Five for Friday and School's Out! (and, of course, a freebie to celebrate!)

Whoo- hoo!  Summer break, here I am!!  First of all, I have to give a true round of applause to all of you teacher folks who faithfully blogged during your last few weeks of school.  I feel like I have been going a zillion m.p.h. for the past two weeks trying to collect all of my final grades, final projects, celebrating with a few school assemblies, field trips and end-of-the-year fun things in the classroom.  By the time I would get home, I was zapped!  So if you're one of those dedicated bloggers during EOY activities, know you are admired!

That being said, we ended our school year in such fun ways and I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to show my Top Five from this final week of school.  This group was pretty challenging, but I will definitely miss their distinct little personalities and all the major growth my babies made this year.  The last days of school this week I made sure to plan fun activities so we could enjoy our time together and end with great memories.  Here are some of the best from my highlight reel:

*Chalk pictures outside and bubbles outside:  The more outdoor activities, the better!  I picked up bubbles from the Dollar Tree and gave each of my students their own bottle.  After watching their reaction, I feel like I should inform their parents to forget the fancy iPods and Wii games...all you need is bubbles :)

*Last Day Flowers delivered from My Man.  Isn't he the sweetest? :)

(and would you look at that nearly-packed up room in the background?? I impressed myself yesterday with how quickly and efficiently I packed and cleaned!)

*Money Movie Party: The first grade team sets up a theater room and a concession room. We give all students an allowance of manipulative money that they get to put in their carefully decorated paper wallets.  Each student must purchase a movie ticket to see the movie, and then can purchase treats at the concession stand, such as popcorn, juice boxes, small cake treats, etc.  This is such a fun way to practice saving and spending money and the kiddos feel so grown up as they make their responsible choices!


*Construction Paper Sorting:  Ok, so you know how construction paper companies STILL don't understand how teachers want/need paper sorted by colors, not in a pretty rainbow pattern?  It's so frustrating trying to quickly go through packs of paper to pull out 23 sheets of red for a holiday craft, only to turn around and do it again for green.  So one of my teammates came up with a fun way to have the students help sort.  We place one sheet of paper on desks around the room, the more space between the desks, the better.  For each color represented, we have a student sit behind that paper to become the "Paper Manager".  The rest of the students are handed a random stack of assorted colors of construction paper and are released to sort each color at the correct desk.  The Paper Manager sits behind her color and carefully organizes the paper into a neat stack so that when we are all done, it's easy to store on my shelves.  In the end, I can collect a large stack of red, orange, yellow, etc., so that next year my paper is sorted and easy to grab!  It's so helpful to me and the students love having a job that truly requires little supervision and instruction from me.

*Classroom Awards:  At my school, we have an awards assembly near the end of the year.  It's special and fun, but it really only recognizes the older students in my building.  Because of that, I created my own classroom awards so that each one of my special students gets a unique award that we can celebrate in our classroom.  I had so much fun creating these!  There are 36 awards total, with one blank award included.  These are available for both First Grade and Second Grade!  Here are a few samples:

I have the First Grade Awards posted here and my Second Grade Awards posted here.  Both are free for you to have some fun in your classroom and celebrate a successful year with your little ones!

What are some of your favorite ways to celebrate the end of the school year?  I'd love to hear your ideas!  

-Liz