End of the Year Hullabaloo!

IT'S WILD!!  

IT'S CRAZY!! 

 It's ALMOST the END of the SCHOOL YEAR! 

So much to do!  

Assessments...

Field Trips...

End of the year gifts...

End of the year celebrations...

End of the year picnics...

So little time!

 OH MY!!!! 

 

Hi! I am Carie Ramirez, a very busy kindergarten teacher this time of the year! 

We are getting ready to go on a field trip to the zoo! So we have made some ZOOS  and FARMS of our own! I covered the student's tables with paper and allowed them to draw a zoo or a farm...or both! Whenever they finish with work early or whenever they have free time, they are allowed to draw and color, using marker, crayon, pencil or colored pencil! (many times they do this while I am trying to get some individual assessments dome) THEY ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!

  

After the zoo, we will be having our end of the year P.B.I.S. celebration! It is a celebration to reward our students for making good choices by Being Ready, Being Safe and Being Kind (our 3 school rules). Our P.B.I.S. committee works to plan a "field day". There are 10 different stations set up outside in the school yard and inside the gym. Each class rotates from one activity to the next. These activities are activities that the students are familiar with and have done sometime throughout the school year.  We do ask parents to come in an help work the stations. We also get members of the community to come and join in the celebration! 
The stations are:  

1. Scooters 

2.  Bowling 

3.  Hurdles 

4.  Tag 

5.  Shot put 

6.  Basketball 

7.  Bean Bags 

8.  Hula Hoops 

9.  Jump ropes 

                                           10.  Dance (chicken dance, hokey pokey, YMCA)

 The same day of our P.B.I.S. celebration, 15 lucky students will have the chance to put whipped cream in the face of our school principal! This year, we got the student's involved in raising money for Relay for Life. We have a school team where teachers and staff are raising money this year we wanted to go that extra step and get the students involved as well.  We have several cancer survivors on our staff and even have two student survivors in our school this year. So we decided that there was no better time to get our student's involved than NOW! We are having coin wars! Each classroom has a milk jug that they are filling with coins! The three classrooms that raise the most, will get to choose 5 random students each to put whipped cream in the principals face! HOW FUN!!!

We also made a flower box to auction off to raise money for Relay For Life! This is a great auction item but also would be a GREAT end of the year gift for a classroom aide, a parent helper, a grandparent helper or your head room parent!

We will be putting real flowers into the box before we auction it off! 

Then we get ready for our end of the year picnic at a local park. Each year, all ten

of our kindergarten classes head to the park on the last day of kindergarten. We

have a picnic and let the children run and play. Parent's are more then welcome to

come and join their child for the day. Upon our return back, we have an "Autograph

Session". This is where the students gather together in the hallway and get each

others autographs for their Kindergarten Memories Book. The student's love to get

the autographs of each other and of course the autographs of the kindergarten

teachers! 

As we finish up the the 2011-12 school year, we can say...man that was fast, where did time go! But we can look back on the school year and see all of the progress that our students have made in the last 10 months! Both academically and socially! Isn't it great! It is one of the most rewarding feelings! I like to show the students and the parents how much my students have grown too, by putting together a special little kindergarten memory folder of my own. The contents include: Any pictures of the student that I have taken throughout the year, the beginning of the year class book photo page, their name puzzle from our Name unit, the students name magnet that has been hanging on our "Name Wall" all year long, their own personal page that they designed from any class book that we made throughout the year, desk tag, beginning and end of the year self drawing, beginning and end of the year writing samples and their "pick-stick". I share this and send it home with each student on the last day of school!

 So as you end your school year, rejoice and be glad in all that you have done for your students! They appreciate you, their parents appreciate you, and I appreciate you! 

I know some of you were looking for the follow up on my Poetry Blog. I will be posting that at my own blog, so stop on over and check it out at Kindergarten Hugs!