Going Out with a Bang!

I made it. The LAST day! Phew! This year just felt like it was forever long. The last day of school was a ton of fun. I wanted to just enjoy my time with my kids before they moved onto 2nd grade or to a new school. To start the day off, we made graduation caps with their favorite thing they learned this year on the sentence strip that held it together. We took wonderful "graduation photos". (Mr. Grumpy pants in the picture didn't want to sit on his knees so he had a pout fest over it - I know…dramatic)

Yes, this is the same Mr. Grumpy pants in the picture above, but here he said "I look like a college kid, take a picture Ms. Brumer!" - how could I resist..he did look like a college graduate!

After that we did a vocabulary review game I created to help clear away the remaining words in our vocabulary chart. After reviewing each word in whole group, I placed a vocabulary word on each student's head and had them walk around the room describing the other person's word until they were able to guess their own word. I figured they would all blab out the other person's word without actually describing it but they did wonderfully! Only one child called the word out and the rest of the class got pretty angry off by her lack of sportsmanship.

 They recorded their discussions and answers on the form above. 

 We made a year book after that, read a few books, and before going outside for free play (bubbles, chalk, football, and hoola-hoops), we practiced our sight words and math facts with shaving cream of course! As always, they LOVED it. 

 It was a tough year and I can't say I'm not relieved to get the opportunity to start fresh, but I will miss these munchkins and all of their craziness! Now, VACATION! I mean…a weekend. Oh yah, I'm back for summer school on Tuesday. Even though mine will be limited, I hope everyone enjoys their summer vacation and takes the time to rest, relax, and rejoice in their time off! Happy Summer!

Summer's So Soon!

I cannot believe how quickly these past few weeks have been flying by. We officially have 5 days of school left! Yikes. Our days pretty much consist of testing, testing, and more testing with a little bit of recess slipped in there. May is always stressful. It's swarmed with retention meetings, FAIR, ITBS, end of the year math test, DRA, and sight words! All in all my kids are handling the not so normal schedule better than I expected. They get more excited for things they took for granted before like math centers but have A LOT of pent up energy.

I wanted my kids to get excited for 2nd grade and I created this bulletin board to keep their focus positive instead of on all this yucky testing.

We're going to make an end of the year memory "year book" then write letters to our favorite staff members and fellow classmates with our favorite memory with them or of them. Our Grade 1 End of the Year ceremony is this week and I've been working on their award certificates. I had to get a little creative for some of my kids but I found "Handy Helper" pretty much sums it.

You can download these here!

Today we did a math facts timed test. Since this was our first one, I gave them 2 minutes to complete 25 basic addition math facts. If they got 100% correct within the 2 minutes I had them play "Minute to Win it" cookie game my fellow teacher and friend, Danielle did with her 3rd graders.

I have never seen my children work so hard or so quietly on anything. EVER. Three of my 11 children got 100% correct, most of the others made minor mistakes. We will continue to do one math timed test a day with more "minute to win it" prizes until school is out! Tomorrow will be the "smarty suck up"! The kids must transfer 1 pack of smarties from one plate to the other using only a straw.

Other than that, I'm trying to keep our days as normal as possible for as long as possible. Lack of routine in my class = chaos and there's already enough of that with a routine, ha!