It's Official...School's Out!

We started our summer vacation as of last Wednesday! It is hard to believe that we have over two months off! The end of the year was bittersweet…here is a recap of everything that happened with us in the past week!

Our beloved principal is retiring after 33 YEARS!!!!

Because his “reign” is up, the teachers at our school worked together to plan a royal event (a.k.a. = crazy assembly!) to honor him. Using The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown as inspiration, each class wrote their own version of the important book, dedicating it to our principal.
 
The students worked hard to make an invitation for this royal event for over 600 students in the school….and believe it or not, they finished them in just 40 minutes! Teamwork!
The king and the queen then placed the invitations on a silver platter and delivered them to all the classrooms.

We wish that we had more pictures to show you of the royal event...but we were at the front of the assesmbly the entire time! At the royal event, our principal walked down the red carpet and was escorted by two students. We played Marche Royal, Fanfares for the Royal Tournament (both songs by Jean Baptiste Lully), and Te Deum Prelude by Marc-Antoine Charpentier as he was walking down the red carpet. (That's what came up on YouTube when we searched for royal music!) Two students held a banner that said, "You may now rise for the King!" and all students rose when he passed by. All classes presented their own version of The Important Book to the King while he was sitting on his throne. The 2nd graders did Black Eyed Peas I've Gotta Feeling and changed the words...I've gotta feeling, that Mr. Z's gonna have some free time, that Mr. Z's gonna have some free time, that Mr. Z's gonna have some free, free time..."

In addition to writing our version of The Important Book, my class also made portraits of our principal. Look how cute they turned out! They look EXACTLY like him!
 
 
Here is the template our students used for The Important Book:

Is there a V.I.P. retiring at your school? Do you have a special parent helper you would like to thank? Click on the file above to download the worksheets from Google docs.

We also had some special visitors the last week of school!
The farmer brought 2 of our chicks to school for all to see. Wow, did they grow and change!! Prior to their arrival, I had them write down 3 Thick Chick questions. When the door opened and they saw their long lost chickie friends they went crazy with happiness and excitement. The farmer answered all of their questions and told us some funny stories about how they love to peck at her painted toe nails when she's wearing flip flops and love to eat Froot Loops and raisins. This visit really helped bring this unit full circle.

So cute!

What is that you ask? Garbage? Garage Sale? Hoarders Anonymous?? Nope, just our classrooms as we were packing up on the last day of school!!! Please tell us that your classroom looks just as hideous???
 
Can you see Nicole's blond head peeking out of right hand corner of the first picture? Either can I! But I assure you...she was there when I took this picture :)

And to think that was just the junk teaching materials that we packed up in our classrooms! I was feeling quite ambitious while cleaning up my room...that I brought home ALL OF THESE BINS to organize over the summer!! Although the bins made it off the front porch and into the entryway, I haven't touched them since. At least Nugget and Cinder seemed interested in them. :)

Outside of school, we also had our own end of the (school!) year celebrations!!! We enjoyed a nice dinner out with the husband/boyfriend and had lots of laughs!
 
For some reason, I could not stop laughing and we had to retake this picture about five times. Can you tell I am still laughing? :)

Nicole also celebrated her own child's last day of school! Years ago, when her daughter was just a baby, a parent volunteer told her about their last day of school tradition. Every year, on the last day of school, they eat ice cream sundaes for dinner!! A way to celebrate the end of a great school year and eat ice cream for dinner---how cool! Thanks to this great idea, Nicole's family started that same tradition when her daughter was in pre-school. Now, as a big 3rd grader, they are still enjoing this tradition every year. :)

YUM!!!

Since Nicole's daughter was done with school a week before her, she told her students about their scrumptious dinner during their morning meeting. Nicole's students went bonkers when they heard about it! 

Turns out, on the afternoon of our last day of school, Nicole received the cutest email from a parent of one of her kiddos. 

Here's the picture she attached with an email simply stating, "They wanted this for dinner. I said lunch!"

So sweet!! 

So what are our plans for our blog posts this summer??? We are planning on posting about how we teach guided reading, guided math, and writing workshop in our classrooms. We also hope to have a blogger meet up with some of you! :)

We're off to enjoy some of this beautiful weather!