Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Year End Giggles and Gifts!

I have officially sent off my first class of students for the summer, granted I have to go to school Thursday for in-service and check out, but that's nothing compared to the smiles and waves from your children as their school bus passes in front of you.  With only a half day of school, we were busy wrapping things up, and doing really absolutely nothing of consequence! What a lovely and peaceful way to end the year!

This blog is a summary of some of the various highlights of my final day!

First things first, my gift bags, which were simple yet effective! I purchased yellow paper gift bags from Dollar Tree, 2 for $1.  The letters were punched from construction paper on our school die-cut machine.  I used the first initial of my students' names then wrote their whole names on the letter with blue markers.  After gluing the letters onto the bags, I stuffed each bag with the following treasures:
  • 2 pencil top erasers (40 count package for $1)
  • 1 glitter pencil (10 count packages for $1 each)
  • 1 mini composition notebook (3 count packages for $1)
  • 1 plastic frog or lizard (8 count packages for $1)
  • 1 plastic Hawaiian lei (6 count packages for $1)
  • 3 brand new chapter books by popular authors, Louis Sachar, Beverly Cleary, and Gordan Korman
    • Although I bought 63 books, it only cost me, personally, about $10 dollars because they were all $1 books on Scholastic Book Clubs website and I had reward points to use! Plus a kind donation to my classroom from MY K-5 principal of many years ago helped lighten the cost. 
    • Thank you Judy Bigby! You are a model educator and person!  







Today was also my last official day of Sing-a-long, our daily music program in which our K-4 classes participate.  The teachers lead all of the students in songs for about twenty minutes first thing in the morning.  
Since I will be teaching a 4/5 blend, our class will not be attending Sing, so this was the last day for sometime...




I also gave my students ten minutes today to ask anything, school appropriate questions, that they had not yet learned about me.  Here are some of the most memorable queries:

Q. Are you an alien.
A. No, I am also not a zebra.

Q. Are you a fan of Justin Beiber? (this was asked by the boys, who proceeded to boo)
A. I do have ONE Justin Beiber song on my iPod, but I do not have a preference either way.

Q. Who is Kevin?
A. My boyfriend.
Student response: Ooooh...

Q. Are you a Beaver or Duck fan?
A. Beaver fan, but I will not rag on my Duck fan students.

Q. How old are you?
A. 23
Student responses: Cheering, "YES!", high-fives, etc... 

All around it was a wonderful day, although the room was too quiet after they all left. :( 
I am so thankful that my first year was so fantastic, I could not have hoped for a more positive working and teaching environment. 

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