Wednesday, June 4, 2008

End of the 2007-2008 school year

  • The last couple of days were a lot harder for me this year because of the class I had. It was very difficult to see these kids move on to middle school knowing that they were in my class the last two years. They are a great bunch of kids and I'm glad I have the opportunity to teach them. We had lots of fun the last two years and had fun the last two days of school too. I gave them their graduation gifts and we watched the DVD montage and they LOVED it. I was so excited. They loved the shutterfly picture books I made for them too. I think their favorite gift by far, was the Candy Bar Awards that I give out. Each students gets an award related to candy (and I give them the candy too). For example...the gummy worm award goes to the class wiggle worm. The whopper award goes to the person who is the best storyteller. The Dove Award goes to the class peacemaker. The Hershey kisses award goes to the class flirt. The 3 Muskateer award goes to the person who always wants to work in a group. They love this and each candy goes with the person...it's perfect! :)

  • Monday we had the Variety show and the Mentor Assembly. I also gave them their gifts, we cleaned desks and sent all of their stuff home. I also put them to work and had them help me clean the rest of my room! :)
  • Tuesday was the last day of school and we had their graduation that morning. I was a mess. Each teacher gave a little speech to their class, and I lost it. I did pull it together and manage to say some heartfelt things about how much I was going to miss them and to remember to always do what is right because it is the right thing to do. I was so proud to be their teacher. After graduation, we went back to the room, the parents came down and we took some pictures (with red, teary eyes I'm sure) and then got ready to go skating with the rest of the grade level. Once we got to the skating rink, the kids were fine. They had a blast doing limbo, playing the star game and helping others who it seemed had never skated before. We had a blast! After skating for a couple of hours, we headed back to school and some of our classroom parents set up for a bbq. We had hot dogs, watermelon, pretzels, chips, and cake/ice cream. They did such a great job setting up for all 70 kids! After eating, we had the kids go get their yearbooks and they had the chance to sign books/shirts and hang out. After an hour or so, we headed back inside to get their things and we watched their DVD slideshow again and some of the acts from the variety show. We cried a little bit more and said our goodbyes....The good news is that some of them will be up to help me get my classroom ready for next year! :)

  • I ended the day with dinner with my in-laws and my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. We ate a Friday's to celebrate the end of school. My mother-in-law retired this year after 29 years of teaching! Dave is also switching schools and hoping to teach Spanish. It was great to get together and catch up. :) We decided to take a picture of the 5th grade (me), 6th grade (Lynne) and 7th grade (Dave) teachers as an end of the year memento!

4 comments:

K.M.L said...

I'll post some graduation pictures once I get them from some of my classroom parents.

Anonymous said...

you sound like such a great teacher! i hope your students and parents realize how lucky they are!

jenny said...

that is awesome stuff you do for your students! i love the idea of the candy bar awards! i think i'm going to have to share with my sister-in-law - she's a 2nd/3rd grade teacher. she would love those ideas.

lina said...

The candy bar awards sound great! What an awesome teacher :)