End of the year presents!

Hey Friends,

Are you still in school?  We are!!  Friday is our last day with kiddos, but then we have to come back on Monday for all day math training and Tuesday to clean and check out of our classrooms.  Tell me, who would be excited about a full day math training the day before SUMMER STARTS?!?  Not this girl!

Anyway...just wanted to share what I did for end of the year presents for my students.  They turned out pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself!

I started with letters from Hobby Lobby.  I waited until they went to 50% off (which happens almost twice a month) and bought the first letter for each of my students' names.  (They were $2.99 each full price.)

On Tuesday, we started working on our class compliments.  I used this AWESOME freebie from the awesome Blair Turner and I would highly recommend checking her out!  I shrunk down the compliment cards so that I could fit more on each sheet and gave each student two sheets.  They wrote their own name on them and then cut them apart.  After that, talked about what giving a compliment means and brainstormed all kinds of nice things we could say to each other.  I passed the compliment cards out to everyone and they got started!

They wrote some super sweet things!  Yes, I am nosy and yes, I read them all!  I shared more of them (especially the funny ones) on my Facebook page, if you want to check them out.  Here's a few-

I really loved them all!!

Today I showed them their initial and they got really excited!  I passed out Sharpie markers and had half of them roam around signing their name, while the other half worked on some math.  I also let them stick on their little Lifetouch sticky picture from picture day!

We also decorated envelopes to keep our compliments in.

At the end of the day today, I tied the envelopes to the initials and sent them home!  I really hope that they hang them up at home and enjoy looking at them all summer!!

Tomorrow's a half day and we're going to spend it CLEANING!  We will take everything out of our desks, yank off our name tags and wipe everything down!  Then Friday is a full day of school for our last day of the year!  We'll have a pizza party for lunch and probably end the day with a little Just Dance dance party in our boxed up, empty classroom!!  Woo hoo!!

Do you do anything special for the end of the year?  I'd love to hear about it!