End of the Year!

June 12, 2017

The end of the year is full of chaos, field trips, laughter & tears! (hence why I am writing this a week after school is out) Since the craziness has died down, I thought I would share a little about our end of the year and share a few freebies!

Being a multiage classroom, one of our main goals is to create a positive community of learners in our classroom where the 3rd and 4th grade students build relationships and help each other out! It is so wonderful to see the relationships that build within the classroom and watch the 4th grade students truly become positive leaders in the classroom. With that being said, the end of the year is hard for all of us because we know that we are letting our 4th grade role models move on to 5th grade! What better way to celebrate their success than a surprise award party?

After our field trip, our 3 classes of students returned to a surprise Hollywood themed award party where parents were waiting for our arrival to celebrate the success of our 4th graders! The students were shocked and excited when they saw what we had waiting for them! Our 3rd graders had “secretly” chosen awards for each of our 4th grade students. Grab the awards here!

Most of our end of the year activities involve continuing to build relationships with our class and the other classes in our multiage program. We walked to a local park and had a picnic, participated in community building activities outside and ended the year with some fun gifts!

This year for our end of the year gifts, we ordered tote bags from Oriental Trading! Our original idea was to vinyl our students names on them – buuuut after trying that out, we realized the bags were made out of plastic and the iron melted the bag right onto my ironing board! haha 🙂 So we settled for writing our student’s names on their bags with sharpie. We also grabbed these 80 cent water bottles from Michaels to hook onto the bags for a fun summer pack!

Inside of the bags we placed a little candy, a Summer Challenge packet, a stamped envelope for them to write to us this summer and a hand-written card. The excitement was buzzing when they came in the room to see their fun summer pack! We then used the tote bags as our autograph tool. Each student had a sharpie and they signed each others bags. It will be a great keepsake for them to remember their year and also a handy tool for them to use this summer!

The summer challenge packet I sent home with them is in my TPT store here. There is a 3rd, 4th and 5th grade packet. It has a variety of fun activities that students can do throughout the summer to review what they learned throughout the year. I sent home all three of them with the different levels of students that I have!

Every year I send home a stamped envelope with my address on it. Inside I place an insert about how to use it and letter paper. I usually get about half of my students to respond over the summer and then I write back! It is so fun to hear from them over the summer. We’ve been out of school for a week and I have already received two letters! 🙂 Grab the freebie letter & note I send home with them here!