End of the Year & Maternity Leave

Well, the time has finally arrived! It's just about time for me to take my maternity leave and for us to meet our little guy. I think I've been dragging my feet a little since I have been feeling so good and I love my students so much. I didn't want to leave them until I absolutely had to!

My last day is tomorrow and my due date is on Sunday- not sure I'd recommend this or ever do it again, but it seemed to work out well this time around.

There has been so much preparation leading up to this point, I almost don't know what to do with myself now that I'm getting ready to say goodbye to my students and hello to my son!

I wanted to share some of the fun things I have done to wrap up the end of the school year.
#1) Balloon Countdown

Each day we have been popping a balloon the help us stay excited and focused as we gear up for the end of the school year.

This has been an awesome tradition that has made our end of the year routine extra special.

A couple of our favorite highlights thus far include:

Making lemonade

 The students loved learning how to make lemonade from scratch. I let them juice the lemons. Then we added boiling water to make the sugar dissolve and finally added cold water at the end. We popped it in the fridge for a bit and enjoyed it at the end of the day. It was a sweet treat and a fun way to incorporate our science unit (states of matter/molecular movement) into a cooking project.

Paper Airplane Day

We watched this youtube video to give us a refresher on how to make paper airplanes, then we went outside and tested them.

It was fun to see which airplanes flew the farthest.

Solar Smores

We had so much fun with this one! 
I was able to find all the ingredients at the dollar store (one of my favorite places to shop!). 
Before we took the smores outside, we voted on how long it would take for the smores to melt. Turns out the majority of the students were close. The smores didn't fully melt until around 2:45pm. 

The smores in the process of melting...

And the verdict: They were melty and hot and delicious; definitely a HUGE hit!

Book Exchange Day

We teamed up with our 4th/5th grade class and brought in books.
This was a fun way to gear the kids up for summer reading. Hopefully they will devour their new books and read, read, read this summer!

#2 Staff & Student Gifts

Since my hubby is the principal, I agreed to help him put a little gift together to thank our staff for all of their awesome service this year.

If you are interested you can download these from my store:

Teacher Thank You Tags

And these fun goodies, I made for my elementary team. 

I made these goody bags for my tutoring students.

Since I'm also taking maternity leave from tutoring, I wanted to leave them with a little treat until we pick back up later in the summer.

You can download this tag for FREE 

 I filled them with a few fun things to thank my students for all of their hard work!

I found these cute little treat tags on TPT and am planning to have my sub pass them out on the last day of school.

Snag yourself a free copy HERE

#3 Thank you Sub Basket

My sub will be taking over for me starting Monday and I wanted to make sure she feels welcomed and appreciated.

I was fortunate enough to find most of these items in the Target dollar section.

Here are some of the essentials:

-Notepad & pencils

-Chocolates

-Candle

-Tissue

-Hand Sanitizer

- Throat Lozenges, Tic Tacks, Aleive & Chapstick

#4 Surprise Baby Shower!

My coworkers and students surprised me with a sweet shower this afternoon. All the elementary kids made cards (which were so cute and hilarious) and we played baby shower games and ate cake. At the end, they sang the baby a lullaby (twinkle, twinkle). It was absolutely fabulous!

I sure am gonna miss my sweet school community and students, but I feel so grateful for the incredible year we have had and extremely excited for this next big step!