Mrs. Plemons' Kindergarten

Bright Ideas for Little Learners

books, Elementary, summer

Books Teachers Love: Last Day Hooray

Wow, I can’t believe that we are talking about June read alouds already! If you are busy wrapping up your school year and looking for great books to keep your class engaged, my bloggy friends and I are sharing our favorite read alouds for the end of the year before we take a little break from our book sharing blog series or the summer.

Lets be real, there are so many exciting things going on at the end of the year it is easy to get wrapped up in all the fun activities and let learning take a back seat. But if you plan ahead you can keep your kiddos working on all of the skills they need while celebrating a great year together.  One of the books I use at the end of the year to engage my students in writing activities is Last Day, Hooray! by Nancy Poydar.

The students and school staff in the story are busy cleaning and wrapping up their school year, dreaming about the summer ahead and planning a celebration for their teacher.  

 

It is both exciting and a little bit sad to take everything down at the end of the year, so this book is perfect to read on the day that we start packing up our own classroom. While I like to have students help with a lot of the work I need to get done it can get pretty chaotic with 18 students all trying to help clean and pack up at the same time.  So I like to have lots of writing activities for students to work on while I have a few students at a time completing end of the year assessments, and helping me with different projects.
The biggest writing project my students work on is their memory book.  
If I have time I like to print out pictures of my students for the first few pages.

It’s fun to see what they remember about their year in kindergarten.

I love seeing students reflect on everything they’ve done throughout the year.
We also complete a few writing projects to share with parents at the Kindergarten Celebration. Students start by writing the top 10 things they learned and memories they made.

Then they choose one special memory to illustrate and read aloud during our ceremony.

And last they use their top ten lists to help them write a letter to the incoming kindergartners about what they will learn and do in kindergarten.

You can find these printable writing activities, and more end of the year fun, in my Kindergarten Celebration Pack.

Don’t forget to enter to win 4 awesome June Read Alouds! And you get to choose any 4 you’d like!

FREE Printable Shape Roads!

Image1

Sign up for ideas, tips & exclusive FREEBIES delivered right to your inbox!

We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit
by  
4 Comments

Comments

  1. Kelli says: May 15, 2016 at 9:02 pm

    What a precious keepsake! And good call on keeping them busy while they also help clean up… the struggle is real!

    Reply
  2. Katie Knight says: May 16, 2016 at 3:15 am

    So sweet!

    Reply
  3. One Sharp Bunch by Ashley Sharp says: May 17, 2016 at 12:52 am

    It's hard to believe that it's already the end of the year! Our memory books are one of our favorites to work on at the end of the year!

    Reply
  4. Peggy Means says: May 18, 2016 at 8:01 pm

    I love your kindergarten memory book!

    Peggy @ Primary Flourish

    Reply

Leave Your Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Popular Posts

Subscribe to the Newsletter

  • Proud of this girl right here!!! She’s almost 15 months and we are graduating to non-edible 😋sensory bin materials. So how did we get here? I started baby bin activities with Arabella in September and while all the materials that we used have been taste safe and edible for the most part, I still try to encourage her not to taste and pur everything in her mouth. 😳Definitely easier said than done. I give a lot of reminders and close the bin if needed. Today was by no means perfect, and she did try to taste the frozen water beads once or twice but she didn’t shove a whole handful in her mouth so I’m calling that a win🙌🏻 I will continue to watch her very closely with all non-edible sensory bin fillers but I think we are opening a whole new world of fun starting today🥳 #mpkbabybins
  • Finishing up our Superhero Preschool activities this week and I’m loving how our cut paper city turned out! 🌃 Can’t wait to finalize and share our plans later this week. #mpkpreschool #preschooler #preschool #preschoolteacher #preschoolathome #preschoolactivities #preschoollife #preschooler #preschoolmom #momsofinstagram #teachermom #teachablemoments #makinglearningfun #instateachers #kidbloggersofig #invitationtoplay #learningthroughplay #playmatters #childhoodunplugged #babylearning #homeschool #homeschoolrocks #homeschoolmom #homeschooling #homeschoolingideas #learningthroughplay #finemotorskills #kidcrafts #preschoolart
  • My plan to start our new preschool unit this week was quickly derailed by a mystery sickness that hit my girls hard on New Year’s Eve 😷. After 3 days of 103-104 fevers, a trip to the doctor, and lots of extra sleep, I think we’ve finally turned a corner 🙌🏻 no fevers, no ibuprofen this morning, and everyone seems relatively happy. I was even able to send Madelynn to school which made her soooooo 😃 happy! So today I was able to get started on our NEW Superhero Preschool theme with Aubrey. I have so many fun activities planned for this theme I might try to squeeze them all in this weekend 🦸🏽‍♀️ First I put together this easy peasy superhero sensory bin to get Aubrey excited about our new theme. She built a city complete with skyscrapers, traps, and a super secret hideout 🦸🏼 It feels so good to be back into our routine even if it was only for one day! #mpkpreschool #superherotheme
  • My 2019 top nine. This year sure has been filled with some amazing memories, here are just a few highlights: ✳️I reached a milestone on TpT that I’d never dreamed possible, making the past 6 years of hard work so worth it. ✳️We watched our sweet baby Arabella grow from a itty bitty newborn into a giggly easy going one year old who puts a smile on all of our faces every day. ✳️I finished tot school and started preschool with Aubrey. And watched her love for dance grow alongside her little bestie Haley. @mrs_evr ✳️Sent Madelynn off to kindergarten, and watched her grow into an independent reader. Somehow she is dancing more and more each day and it’s so fun watching her do what she loves. ✳️And finally I continued to expand our early curriculum with new themes, units and ideas. Seeing so many families, centers and classrooms using our activities is truly amazing! 2020 is going to be another amazing year, I cannot wait to see what’s in store ❤️
  • Name crafts are one of our favorite parts of preschool. Aubrey take so much pride in them each week and I love that they help her work on so many skills. ✅Cutting ✅Gluing ✅Letter recognition ✅Letter writing #mpkpreschool #gingerbreadhouse #gingerbreadtheme
  • I’ve been terrible at sharing our preschool and baby bin activities lately on Instagram other than in my stories so I’m trying to get better starting this week! Today we started the first of our holiday themes: Gingerbread. 😋Aubrey LOVES to color and draw right now, so after our stories completing a written response is super fun with her. After we talked about characters and listed the characters in this version of the story I asked Aubrey to draw the main character. Check out this cutie with her gingerbread man. I am going to try to squeeze in gingerbread and reindeer this week then follow that up with two weeks of Christmas before we add a new preschool theme at the end of the month.😅 We are going to be busy busy amidst all the other holiday craziness, but I can’t wait to share our festive holiday themes with you🎄 #mpkpreschool
  • Sending these cuties off to the ❄️Daddy Daughter Winter Ball ❄️
  • So I’m totally the mom that gets super excited to send something adorable and festive for school parties🙋🏼‍♀️ #sorrynotsorry But my daughter’s school only allows store bought prepackaged treats😩 (i totally get it with food allergies and things it’s so much easier to manage!) But that meant I had to get creative. I signed up to send in juice boxes and decided to dress them up with a little glue, paper, googly eyes and pipe cleaners. Check out a step by step tutorial in my stories today☝🏻 I’ll try to post directions on the blog ASAP. Does your school allow Halloween parties? Would you like to see more easy ways to dress up store bought treats for school parties?

FOLLOW ME @MRSPLEMONSKINDERGARTEN