10 Awesome End of the Year Gifts and FREE Gift Tags

The final countdown is here. We are down to single digits of days left in the school year. While I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I feel like the these last few days are like dog years, each normal one must be multiplied by seven. So eight days feels a little like fifty-six.

At the end of the year my to do list always balloons until it is a blur of field trips, report cards, cumulative folders, summative evaluation meetings, data collection, data recording, checklists, yearbook signing, paperwork, more paperwork, room cleaning, and dealing with the piles of stuff I put in piles until I had time to deal with them (now or never). I am pretty much ready to lapse into a coma by 7 p.m. Every. Single. Night. 

In the midst of this blinding exhaustion, I also like to get my students a fun end of the year gift. In early May, I start dreaming of personalized acrostic poems for each student, a DVD I-Movie with pictures from our year, or mini-time capsule bursting with memories of all our special events. 

By the time the school year is actually winding to a close and I am so tired that no Starbucks in the world has enough caffeine to keep me awake past my (goal) bedtime of 7 and my gift ideas are scaled WAY down. By the time the last day countdown is in single digits, I am all about getting each student a fun little gift, with an adorable label, that can be assembled in less than 15 minutes, and ideally costs around $20 or less total ($1 or less per student, I am a teacher after all).

I TRY to plan in advance, but there have been years I have stopped at the grocery store on the way to school on the last day and frantically searched for something cute and fun. In an effort avoid the last minute crunch I went on a Dollar Store shopping spree and came up with 10 fun and cheap end of the year gifts. (Click on the pictures to download the gift tags for FREE, because free is AWESOME when your budget is $20 or less...)

1. Dollar store sunglasses + a gift tag = super cute and PRACTICAL!
   
   
   
2. Everybody loves Goldfish crackers and you might get bonus points with parents because they are not loaded with sugar!
   
   
   
3. If your year rocked, Pop Rocks make a fun gift!
   
   
   
4. A Dollar Store bucket and a cute tag make a super cute gift (and they can use the bucket to carry home any remaining items from their desks!
   
   
   
5. Nothing screams school like chalk and this super cute tag makes it a fun gift!
   
   
   
6. A Dollar Store kite (or glider) works well with this gift tag; it is perfect if you are a STEM classroom!
   
   
   
7. Your students will GLOW with pride when they get this Glow Stick gift!
   
   
   
8. Students will love a cool popsicle treat!
   
   
   
9. Let the fun bubble over with this super cute gift!
   
   
   
10. Nothing says summer like a beach ball!
    
    
    
    
    

Clearly, now that I have all these gift tags I will be super organized with my end of the year gifts for the rest of my teaching career. After all, I said it here on the internet, so it MUST be true!

Happy end of the school year!

I need a wAtEr BrEaK!!!

Each year at my school, our Firsties get to have a fun filled day of WATER!!

In honor of our summer vacation being HERE!!!! YAY!!!! I thought I would share some of our AWESOME Water Day Games.  In order to keep costs low for us, we asked all the parents to donate supplies for each of these games.  And boy did they followed through! We had more than enough of everything.

 #1. Water Squirters - We filled buckets with water, gave each child a water squirter, and they were off! (Of course we went over rules like no spraying in the face before hand AND NO water guns were allowed.)

  

#2. Bubbles - We gave each child a bottle of bubbles. just look at the excitement on her face!

#3. Car Wash - There are 2 buckets at either end of a line of kiddos.  One bucket is full of water and the other is empty. The first person in line squeezes a sponge and fills it with water from the first bucket. Then they pass the sponge down the line. The last person in line runs to the empty bucket and squeezes the sponge.  Then they run with the sponge back to the front of the line to refill it and start the sponge going down the line again. They get really wet with this one!

#4. Ice pops - We gave each child an ice pop as a fun snack. 

#5. Polar Plunge - We had 2 plastic pools filled with water and ice.  Brrrrr!!! The kiddos were in 2 lines and had to run down to the end of the pool, jump in the water, spin around on their bottoms, get back out, then run to their line and tag the next person. However, we live in FL and it was soooo hot that the ice kept melting and didn't stay very cold! One of our FABULOUS PTO moms decided that the kids should be squirted with ice cold water from a cooler in order to help us solve that problem!!

#6. Duck Duck Splash - We had 1 plastic pool filled with water, one small bucket of water, and 1 sponge. The kiddos sat around the pool and began a normal game of duck duck goose. The difference here is that the person walking around the circle is holding a sponge that is loaded with water. They hod the sponge over everyone's head as they say "duck". When they finally choose their "goose", they say "goose" and squeeze the sponge over that persons head.  Then they run around the pool. If the "chooser" catches the "goose", then the goose has to sit inside the pool until someone else gets caught!

These are just a few of our fun games. We also do a field day with more "DRY" activities but that I will save for another day!

Does your school allow you to have water games? How do you celebrate summer coming with your kiddos?

iT's FINALLY hErE!!

The loooooonnnnnggggggg awaited end of the year is finally here! Teachers be like "Whoop! Whoop! It's finally here" AND THEN it. hits. us. ALL. Our thoughts seem to change immediately to "Oh SugarHoneyIcedTea, it's here already????"! This happens to me every year.  We are chugging right along and all of a sudden its May. Now we have deadlines.  Progress Reports, Tutoring Data, Field Day letters to be sent home, Water Day letters to be sent home, Planning for "graduation", searching for cuter graduation songs than the other teachers have (You all know you do it!), Practicing for "graduation",  Testing for Report Cards, Report Cards, Profile Cards, Profile Card sorting, Cume folder checks, Summer homework prep, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Observations, PLUS all the normal stuff we do like weekly newsletters, homework packets, planning for each week, preparing for each week, the list goes on and on and on and on!! My head is spinning like the Gravitron (remember that old carnival ride? Is it still around?Huh?)
Anyways, I figured I could help out in one little area. I love writing lyrics to songs. In my class we sing to do pretty much EVERYTHING. And not boring Twinkle twinkle tunes but fun up beat pop tunes. (Parents -if your reading this-I promise they are top 10 pop hits that YOU sing with them in your car. Besides it's just the tune, I change the words) For instance, instead of saying to Line up in ABC order, we sing, "Line up like you do, l-l-l-line up like you do, A-a-aBC order we do, A-a-a BC order we do, line up like we do, l-l-line up like we do" to the tune of Love me like you do by Ellie Goulding. It is so funny how easy it is to get them to do something super quickly just by singing a tune they know and LOVE! They are constantly coming in with new tunes that they want me to make up words for them to do something to.  This is a super easy, fun thing to do with them to change it up a bit at the end of the year when everyone is feeling bogged down with ALL the testing and JUNK that we have to do!
To make my End of the year Graduation songs upbeat, up to date, and fun, I did just this.  I have two simple, fun songs that you could try at your End Of The Year graduation/celebrations.  Maybe this will take some of the End Of The Year pressure off (cause you know that's what you feel like- a pressure cooker about to BLOW).

One is to the tune of "Roar" by Katie Perry. I call it SEE ME GROW and the other is to the tune of "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen. It is called FIRST GRADE BABY.  Just click the links to see more details about each of the songs.

I hope my little tip helps things stay fun in your classroom as we all start to fall into the craziness of the end of the year!  Deep Breaths and remember, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming"!!!! You are almost done!