To celebrate all 20 of our milestone accomplishments, we turned our last day of school in to one big festival of fun! I wish I could take credit for at least some of the awesome creativity that fueled the activities of our last day, but I can't. Everything we did was found in this amazing blog post by the fabulous Reagan Tunstall. After all, the best teachers steal from the best and learn from the rest, right?! ;)
The majority of our day was spent playing 7 different Minute to Win It games. SO MUCH FUN!!
For games 1-4 & 6, I had four students play at a time while the rest of the students watched and cheered them on. After all the students had a chance to play, the winner from each group went against each other in a final "championship round".
Game 1: Go Fishing
They had to use a paper plate to move a tissue paper fish from one side of the room to the other.
Game 2: There She Blows
Starting at one end of a desk/table, they have to blow a plastic cup off the opposite end of the desk/table using a straw.
Game 3: Nose Diving
The kiddos had to move three cotton balls from one plate to another using their noses! (Noses which were covered in petroleum jelly, that is.)
Game 4: Bean There Done That
For this game, they had to move five [uncooked] pinto beans from a paper plate into a plastic cup using a straw.
Game 5: Breakfast Scrambler
I emailed my parents asking for empty cereal boxes two days beforehand and still got WAY more than we needed! This game had two rounds. All of the students played this game at the same time. In the first round, students worked with a partner to put together the cereal box puzzle. The first two groups who won got to go to round two (the "championship" round) where they had to put a different cereal box puzzle together by themselves.
Game 6: Noodling Around
Okay, this game was SUPER hard for every last one of my students! The goal of the game was to get 3 noodles onto a stick of spaghetti without using your hands (they had to hold the spaghetti stick in their mouth). My students struggled to even get one noodle on the spaghetti stick (because of its length) and the few who did manage to get a noodle ended up dropping it as soon as they went for the second noodle because they couldn't figure out how to pick up the noodles without tilting their heads down, which made the stick of spaghetti slant down, causing the noodle to slip right off. Even with me modeling, they still couldn't get it. I ended up going with Reagan's modified suggestion and broke the spaghetti sticks in half and only made them pick up 2 noodles instead of 3... Even with this modification, only 4 of my 19 kiddos were able to do it! It was a major challenge!
Game 7: Face the Cookie
For our final game, the student's had to move a Nalla Wafer from their forehead to their mouth using nothing but their facial expressions-- so funny to watch!! I did not break the kids up in to small groups for this one, they all found a seat and did it at the same time. Like game 6, this is another challenging game- only two of my kiddos were successfully able to make the cookie into their mouth!
After we congratulated all of our Minute to Win It winners, we took a deep breath, calmed down, and rolled out the 'red carpet' (butcher paper). Each student got 15 seconds of fame to strut their stuff down the red carpet with a Candy Award that matched their individual personalities perfectly! This was SUCH a fun treat for them. The funny thing is, all of the students were able to guess who was getting what award just by the description of it-- I LOVE that they all have such unique and charming little personalities. This will definitely be a last day tradition in my class! [Next year I plan to actually make a cute "Goodbye 1st Grade, Hello 2nd Grade!" poster... instead of just writing it on the white board. ;)]
SO sad to see this sweet group of kiddos go, but cannot wait to see what next year has in store for me and my classroom. BRING IT ON, YEAR TWO! ;)
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