Aloha!

Source: discoverhawaiitours.tumblr.com

Well, this is it, everyone: the last week of school before our summer program starts!

 This means that I'll be blogging a little less since I won't be planning this summer. I'm going to use the time to work on my TpT shop and keep you posted on happenings and ramblings in general. Look for a freebie soon!

This time of year is a bittersweet time for us as teachers, especially since we're in the unusual position of knowing exactly who we're getting from the younger classes. But that's a good thing! Use this time to talk to the teachers about which strategies have worked. And hope that they'll rise to the structure in your classroom as they continue to grow. 

       We have to remember too that this is also a confusing time for the students. We had some good conversations about "aloha" meaning "Hello" and "goodbye." As a group, we talked about saying goodbye to old friends and saying hello to new ones. They got a little sad thinking about losing their friends. It helped that we had talked about making friends previously, so we were able to draw on that knowledge and review it. The week before, we'd talked about kindergarten and visited a class next door to our center. We took along scavenger hunt sheets and the kids had a blast. It's hilarious how shy even the most rambunctious ones get! Overall, it was a good week. 

This week, we're relaxing. We had our end-of-year luau last week and have already lost one student for the summer. So I'm digging into my Pinterest page! You know the ones...you collect all these great ideas and then they just sit there. Maybe you can't find a theme to fit it in or maybe it just got buried. We're having a blast.

So far, we made tape-resist letters with gloss paint (corn syrup and food coloring), drew pictures and painted them with gloss paint. The kids loved it and asked for it repeatedly. It turned out to be a great sensory experience since it was so sticky. We found out quite on accident that it resists crayons and makes great stained glass if you paint on white paper and hang it in the window.

 Later in the week, we drew what was missing from various pictures.   

We had a nice circle time beforehand about what was missing and what might complete it. Some responses included "turtle shell," "wings," and "tentacles." All for the same picture of a person. There were quite a few students who opted simply to create rather than extend, and that's ok too. 

I'm going to miss these kids.