Tears.

There were many tears today as it was our last day of school :(  This year marked my first official year of teaching, so naturally I became attached to my class. It was emotional saying good-bye to them for the summer. As I told them all how much I love them, tears came to my eyes and I couldn't help crying as I thought of how I wouldn't see their faces for the next few months and feel the love from their many hugs each day. I felt horrible, then, when 4 of my precious little girls started crying and didn't stop! I was heartbroken to see them leave today. On the bright side, there is a chance I may looping with them to 2nd grade next year and would be their teacher once again! I won't know until summer what God has in store for me here at our school, as it will all be based on enrollment numbers [we just keep growing and growing!] but I know I will see their smiling faces again soon :) I'm praying for whatever He has for me, whether it be to stay in first or move on with them!

I did give them their Scrappers tickets [mentioned in an earlier post - Counting it Down] and they are all so excited to come visit me at a game! I also gave them each a piece of baseball themed writing paper with my address attached so they could write me a letter telling me about coming to the game and all they are doing this summer. I certainly look forward to receiving some great pieces of mail soon!

I hope you all have a blessed summer, or rest of the school year, whichever applies. I'll be writing soon!

Counting it Down!

We have only 9 more days of school left!!!! and boy, can I tell! The kids are crazy with excitement and chatter going into the homestretch. I was so happy to complete my last bulletin board for the year yesterday too! I have to share with you, because it's probly one of my faves! I found the sunglasses idea on Pinterest here and just ran with it! The sunglasses have pictures the kids drew of what they "visioned" for their summer. I decided to make it more of a "craftivity," if you will, and added the thought bubble (from Microsoft Word). They wrote about their "visions" in the bubble and that's what they had to draw. I simply drew out the sunglasses and cut them out for them. They drew on small white papers that looked like sunglass lenses and we glued those onto the black sunglasses. I took their pictures and put the sunglasses on them and put the thought bubble coming off them like they were thinking about their "visions." They had such a good time doing this, I decided to do one too! [sans picture of course! :)] The title just came to me and is a perfect fit for it - as I said, one of my favorite boards for the year! What do y'all think!?!

We also had another fun activity added to our room a la Pinterest [man that site can get me in trouble!] I found the idea to put up balloons to countdown that last few days of school. The idea I found here counted down the last 20 days. However, my little munchkins would go nuts for that long [and so would I!] so I trimmed it down to 10 days. I hung the balloons in my room this morning and we are popping one per day to find the fun activity inside. Here's what I listed to help with ideas:

Day 10. 10 minutes of free time

Day 9.  extra snack (cookies and hot cocoa :)

Day 8.  sit wherever you want today\

Day 7.  extra recess

Day 6.  dance party!

Day 5.  surprise guest (probly my sister for a craft/read aloud)

Day 4.  field trip (love how that worked out!)

Day 3.  popcorn and a movie (we are reading Charlotte's Web so we will watch that)

Day 2.  hat day

Day 1.  school carnival and class "baseball" party

About the "baseball" party... I work for a Minor League baseball team in the summers, the Mahoning Valley Scrappers [Cleveland Indians affiliate]. This will be my 9th season there, so as an end of the year gift I am giving each of my little learners a free ticket for any game of their choice, along with a coupon I found in the phone book (LoL!) for buy one, get one free tickets. They can come visit me as I sell "ice cold pop!" all around the stadium.  I have worked there for going-on 9 seasons now, so I can't give up the fun job of vending! I have had many former students from where I worked in the past come visit me there, and wanted my kiddos to have a chance to come visit too. I made a fun "Have a BALL this summer!" letter telling them about it, along with the ticket. I am going to find some baseball pencils and suckers to give out too, and we're going to munch on some peanuts and cracker jacks (of course!). Hopefully there will be a time and place on the last day for us to play baseball as a class also!

We had a great time popping the balloon for Day 10 today! I think it was more exciting than the activity listed inside!

Hope you found some inspiration today!

Have a blessed day :)

-Tami