The Last Weeks of School Part I

You might be thinking that the title of this post implies that there will be more than one in a series. You'd be correct.

At the time that I write this, we have only two weeks of school left in my district. A while back, I saw an idea for the end of the school year on Pinterest. In true scatterbrain fashion, I forgot to pin it. However, the image stuck in my mind.

The teacher who wrote it (sorry I don't know the source; if it's YOU, please tell me so I can give you credit!) blogged about blowing up balloons and, inside each balloon, was a fun activity for each day of the last weeks of school.

I wanted to do this for the last three weeks of school, so I bought a bag of 15 balloons and worked with the students to come up with a list of 15 random things that would take anywhere from 5-20 minutes to do. The kiddos blew up the balloons, inserted a slip into each one, and I pinned them on a bulletin board.

balloons on the board, not in rows, or patterns or anything

Each day, at a different, random time, I popped a balloon. The kids had a new countdown each day; when there were 15 days left, they counted down from 15 to 1. When there were 14 days left, they counted down from 14 to 1. I think you get the drift.

I popped a balloon, read the slip, and we proceeded to do whatever activity the balloon commanded! The kids and I are ALL having a blast with this, as a matter of fact! The morning that we popped "musical chairs" was quite hysterical, especially when it was time to change classes, and my team teacher was at the door watching all these fifth graders play a little kids' game. We laughed and had such fun! I really recommend that you do this with your students!

Here's a photo documentary of all our activities from last week. Next weekend, I'll share all the activities of the coming week. If you choose to do this with your children, will you leave a list of some of the activities your kids came up with?

Here are the first five on our list.

Musical chairs (we removed more than 1 chair at a time to speed it up)

Take a Nap Day - Favorite of EVERYONE! A 10 minute rest made for a great afternoon :)

Learn a New Dance (we learned the Spongebob from Mahalo.com)

Joke Day

*We also had "Talk in Accents Day" but I forgot to snap a picture! 

How are you planning to wind down the school year?