End of the Year

I'm back!! I would love to give a grand excuse for my lack of blogging, but basically, life happened :). We have been crazy busy in our class with field days, field trips, graduation, and more. You name it and we've done it this month!
Last week, I shared a video with some pictures from our class awards/end of the year parent program on Instagram and some sweet ladies asked me to blog about it, so her goes.
Every year I try to have some type of little awards program for parents to come to that ends our year. I love this tradition for many reasons - it lets me see parents and talk to them about their child {something that is hard to do in the chaos of graduation}, it lets parents have a glimpse of our year, and it lets me leave the year on a positive note for each child. The morning of, I set our tables up like this:

At each child's seat there is an end of the year gift for the child, a parent gift, a parent letter, the child's memory book, and a summer pack. Here's a closer look...
For each child's gift, I give them a bucket with extra books that came with old reading packs, a box of crayons, and some math games that we played throughout the year that they can play with their family over the summer.

I put the math games in sheet protectors and give the kids a dry erase marker and dice to play the games. {These games were made by friend Deeanna - I'm trying to get her to put them on TpT :) }

For the parent gift, I take each child's picture, add their favorite things from kindergarten, then put it in a little frame I picked up at Wal-mart. Super easy! The picture is an idea from Katie over at Little Warriors - I love how they turn out! I also add these to the end of my class video.

I also had a letter for the parents at each seat. This is a combination of letters I've seen over the years and I'm not quite sure where it originated. You can grab the letter here. :)

Then, I have the kids' memory books. These are in my TpT store and are so super simple...which isn't that what we all need at the end of the year??? At the beginning of the book, I write each child their own, handwritten letter. It's something that's important to me and I want each child to look back and know they were loved! Then, I put a poem that my 1st grade teacher gave me way back when {so I don't know who originally wrote it}. You can grab the poem here. Following that are the memory book pages. I also add in a DVD of the video I make for our class.

Under the memory book is a summer pack our school sends home with the kids with sight words, math facts, and cold reads to practice for 1st grade.
After the parents look at all the things at their child's seat, we start awards. These are just simple, informal awards, but the kids love them. I give each child a candy award and a general award. The candy awards were an idea from Reagan Tunstall {she has hers free here} and the others are just some I made up. The kids love getting their candy!

After awards, we watch our class video that I make using pictures I take throughout the year. I use iMovie and it is super simple once you try it!

That's about it - we have some simple snacks, then we're done. It is a little bit of work, but most parents are always appreciative and I love doing it for my kids!

Now, I'm off to gear up for our last day tomorrow {that will be full of organizing cumulative records - joy!}