Hopefully you're like me and have been soaking up every little bit of precious summer! This post is a little late, but I was thinking you could maybe tuck it away for next year. :) Also, feel free to pin any pictures so you can be sure to find them when you go to plan end of the year stuff next year.
At the end of the year, my team and I plan theme days for the last week of school. I love theme days because I find that my students stay engaged in "school stuff" even though summer is so close they can taste it. Speaking of taste... Why yes, we do use a little food to keep up the engagement! Food definitely helps!
Even though we all do the same theme on the same day, we don't all necessarily incorporate the same activities into each day. So here's a peek into what I specifically do in my classroom...
Lazy Day at the Beach... We spend our beach day lounging on towels and reading outside on the field. We also chow down {both teachers and students, ha!} on popsicles. Of course you know with kids they can't just read outside all day, so I created stations back in my classroom to keep them engaged for the rest of our day and still stick to our beach theme. The best part, in my opinion, is that I found beach sounds on YouTube and I played that through our speaker system. The thing with stations is that they can get quite loud, but my rule was we can't be louder than the music. Here is the link to that YouTube video if you want to use beach sounds to add to your beach day excitement. Here is a look at my stations...
Froot Loop Graphing
Beach Puzzles
Summer Bucket List
Sun Craft
Beach Ball Craft
Since each student works at their own pace, I made a packet with printables from my Lazy Day at the Beach unit for them to work on while they waited to move on to the next station.
You can find my Lazy Day at the Beach unit here.
Cool Campout Day... For this theme day, we laid on blankets and read by the glow of the "campfire". We also made s'mores and worked on activities from my Cool Campout Day unit. Again, I found camping sounds on YouTube and it was the perfect background noise for reading. Here is the link to that YouTube video.
You can find my Cool Campout Day unit here.
Friendship Day... Our kiddos spent a good chunk of time signing yearbooks on Friendship Day. We also made Friendship Mix, Friendship Bracelets, and Friendship Necklaces, and worked on activities from my Friendship Day packet.
If you would like my Friendship Day unit you can find that here. The recipe for Friendship Mix, along with the Friendship Bracelet and Friendship Necklace templates, are all in my unit. What I love about this product is that I have included activities that would be perfect for the beginning of the year too! Next year, I will be incorporating the friendship theme into the first week of school. I may even make friendship mix the last day of the first week back as a special treat!
The other two theme days we had were Game Day and Movie Day. On Game Day, students brought in board games, not electronics, from home and took turns playing each others' games. It was so much fun to watch my kiddos playing games that I played as a kid! Movie Day is pretty self explanatory. We save that for the very last day because our kiddos aren't allowed to bring anything with them to school, so we just relax, watch a cute movie, and munch on popcorn {Pre-popped is the way to go!}.
Here is an example of the letter we send out to parents regarding our end of the year theme days...
Feel free to use the wording to help craft your own letter!
I'm off to enjoy this nice summer night! Hopefully I can can stay on top of blogging this summer!!
Oh yeah, all my end of the year units are on sale just in case you want to stock up for next year!!
At the end of the year, my team and I plan theme days for the last week of school. I love theme days because I find that my students stay engaged in "school stuff" even though summer is so close they can taste it. Speaking of taste... Why yes, we do use a little food to keep up the engagement! Food definitely helps!
Even though we all do the same theme on the same day, we don't all necessarily incorporate the same activities into each day. So here's a peek into what I specifically do in my classroom...
Lazy Day at the Beach... We spend our beach day lounging on towels and reading outside on the field. We also chow down {both teachers and students, ha!} on popsicles. Of course you know with kids they can't just read outside all day, so I created stations back in my classroom to keep them engaged for the rest of our day and still stick to our beach theme. The best part, in my opinion, is that I found beach sounds on YouTube and I played that through our speaker system. The thing with stations is that they can get quite loud, but my rule was we can't be louder than the music. Here is the link to that YouTube video if you want to use beach sounds to add to your beach day excitement. Here is a look at my stations...
Froot Loop Graphing
Beach Ball Craft
Since each student works at their own pace, I made a packet with printables from my Lazy Day at the Beach unit for them to work on while they waited to move on to the next station.
You can find my Lazy Day at the Beach unit here.
Cool Campout Day... For this theme day, we laid on blankets and read by the glow of the "campfire". We also made s'mores and worked on activities from my Cool Campout Day unit. Again, I found camping sounds on YouTube and it was the perfect background noise for reading. Here is the link to that YouTube video.
You can find my Cool Campout Day unit here.
Friendship Day... Our kiddos spent a good chunk of time signing yearbooks on Friendship Day. We also made Friendship Mix, Friendship Bracelets, and Friendship Necklaces, and worked on activities from my Friendship Day packet.
If you would like my Friendship Day unit you can find that here. The recipe for Friendship Mix, along with the Friendship Bracelet and Friendship Necklace templates, are all in my unit. What I love about this product is that I have included activities that would be perfect for the beginning of the year too! Next year, I will be incorporating the friendship theme into the first week of school. I may even make friendship mix the last day of the first week back as a special treat!
The other two theme days we had were Game Day and Movie Day. On Game Day, students brought in board games, not electronics, from home and took turns playing each others' games. It was so much fun to watch my kiddos playing games that I played as a kid! Movie Day is pretty self explanatory. We save that for the very last day because our kiddos aren't allowed to bring anything with them to school, so we just relax, watch a cute movie, and munch on popcorn {Pre-popped is the way to go!}.
Here is an example of the letter we send out to parents regarding our end of the year theme days...
I'm off to enjoy this nice summer night! Hopefully I can can stay on top of blogging this summer!!
Oh yeah, all my end of the year units are on sale just in case you want to stock up for next year!!
