My first year in a new school district and new grade has come to an end. It was a busy year, but a fun one! Did it seem to FLY for anyone else or was that just me? I don't know if it was like that for me because it was such a full year of learning new curriculum and a new grade or what, but it went crazy fast! I will say, I had such a fun time on our last 1/2 day of school this year. It was great celebrating with my class and just enjoying the day together. Here's a look at what we did!
We started off finishing up our memory books that we worked on during the last week of school.
We had to go around and put our autographs in everyones book. They turned out super cute!
Here's a look at a few of the pages in the book. I hope they treasure these because they will be so fun to look back on way down the road. :)
Once our class signing was over, we had time to play some Minute to Win It games! They loved these!
This first one we had two teams and they had to fan their tissue paper fish into the bucket on the other side of the carpet with a paper plate. When they got it in, they had to run the fish and plate back to the next person in line.
Then we did the noodle challenge. Each kiddo got a piece of spaghetti noodle (we broke about 1/3 off to make them a little shorter) and two penne noodles. Without using their hands, they had to get both penne noodles on the spaghetti noodle. Pretty tricky for some of them, but fun to watch! ;)
Next up was another team activity where they had to toss the ping pong ball into their team's cup from behind a certain line. Once they got it in, they brought the ball to the next person in line on the other side. I split each team in half so we had some "rebounders" on each side of the cup. This helped prevent spending most of the time chasing the ping pong ball. :) This one got pretty intense!!
After that game, it was time to head out to the all school recess. We are just a K-1 building with 6 classes in each grade. It's a tradition that the 1st graders get to race the principal on the last day of school, so they race in the field from one fence to the other. It's pretty funny to watch and they are dead tired when they finish!
After recess, the first graders went to an assembly to watch a video of memories from the year, get a special gift from the principal, and get ready for the clap up. For the clap up, all the parents and kindergarten classes go out and line the hallways as the first graders walk through everyone clapping them on to 2nd grade and a new school.
When we got back to the room, we had time to have the kids help clean up the classroom (which they LOVE!). We played a "game" with all the sight words on our word wall which actually helped me sort them out and have them ready for next year's Journeys lessons. I passed out a few to each kiddo and when I called out the sight word, they had to throw it on the table and then I would collect and put them into the correct lesson's file for next year. It was a fun and efficient way of sorting out all those words. It was a last minute, genius idea that I thought of and it was so helpful because I was dreading sorting all of those words back out.
Then it was about time for lunch. We had a picnic lunch together outside and then they went out to regular recess. As they played at recess, I set the room up for our final goodbye with a red carpet, message, and floats!
When they got back, we had our floats first. Yum, yum!
Then we got ready for our final goodbye to 1st grade!
Earlier in the week, everyone had to write just one word about each of their classmates. I took those words and put them into a shape wordle with their name. For the final goodbye, I read off each kiddo's name and all the special words used to describe them. They walked the red carpet as I did this and then they got a big hug and good luck from me at the end. It was a special, perfect end to our year.
We finished right in time to head on out to pickup. What an amazing last day of 1st grade! What do you do for your last day of school? I would love to hear in the comments. :)
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