End of the Year Ideas

I can't believe this year is already coming to an end.  It has went so fast and this time of year seems to fly by. We (each kindergarten teacher) puts on their own graduation in their classroom.  I like the way we do it because I can add my own tweaks to my graduation for my students.  We always sing 1st Grade, 1st Grade sung to the tune of New York, New York.  Find the song here.  Then I always have the students say a poem.  It is the spelling of kindergarten and each kid or group of kids get a letter and say a line to match the letter.  I can't remember where I got this idea from, but I love it.  It starts out saying K is for Kindergarten, hip hip hooray.  Then we sing Make New Friends while they are holding on to one another.  Then I added a Readers Theater called Hello and Goodbye that groups of students read.  Once that is all finished then I pass out the diplomas and other awards.

I have seen the candy bar awards before and liked them but I have never given them out before.  So, this year I thought since my class is SO incredible I would give out the candy bar awards.  I purchased them from TPT. 

I passed out graduation hats (coloring page) for the students to color.  Then they cut them out.  I then printed an 8 by 10 picture of each student and glued the hat on.  Then I got them laminated for each student.

I always try to give my students a little of something at the end of the year.  This is what I decided on.

I gave them a bucket fill with stuff.  On the shovel I wrote "I Dig You."

Inside the bucket...

 

Puzzle with a tag that says, "You have all the pieces you need for first grade." Graduation tattoos, graduation necklace, graduation ball, school id, Make New Friends Poem with all the students on it, ice cream bubbles, cut and paste graduation activity, and a dvd of the slideshow.  They also received their flower paintings to take home that we were working on in class. 

Also in the bucket is this orange piece of paper.  It has a penny taped to it of the year they are graduating.  The paper has a poem on it.  I got this idea from another teacher (sorry I don't remember who) that used it for graduating seniors.  I switched the ending around a little bit for my kinders.

 

 I also make a slideshow of all the pictures I take throughout the year.  I have learned to cut down on the pictures I take because I don't want the slideshow to be too long.  I then burn the slideshow and the other movies we made for the parents. 

Well, this was my end of the year graduation for my class.  What kind of things do you do?