No longer a first year teacher..

Today I put my little ones on the bus for the last time this year! They are headed to first grade!!! I am so proud of how far they have come. We have spent this week just cleaning up and playing. They were so relieved and kept saying "so we really don't have to do any pages?!" Yesterday we had graduation. They sang some songs for the parents (Days of the Week, Months of the year, etc.) Each child got a diploma and I also gave out citizenship award, perfect attendence, and the most F.R.E.D. books read over the year. After that, we spent the day outside playing on the playground as well as playing on some rented inflatables. It was a great day!

Today...was an epic last day. To start the day, we spent about thirty minutes scrubbing stickers off of my tables that my kids thought were cool to put there. As I dropped them off at their special, the lights went off throughout the building. The way that my room is, I have no outside door or windows. It was so dark in my room it was difficult to see your hand in front of your face. I managed to locate my flashlight. I worked on some things with that until I went back to pick them up. We stayed outside until lunch because clearly 19 Kindergartners in a room with no lights is not a good idea. As we headed back in for lunch we had to all hold on to each other and navigate through the hallways by the dim light of my cell phone. As we were preparing for lunch the lights came back on! Hallelujah! As we were sitting down to eat our lunch, we were notified that we were on lock down..we couldn't leave the building until about 1:00 when it was cleared.

Since we were stuck in the room, and it was close to 95 degrees outside, I cleaned the room and the kids helped. I took down everything off one of my walls that needs to be painted. Let the kids get the staples out of it- they loved it because I let them stand in chairs- may not have been a safe option. They organized the toy shelf and cleaned the tables and chairs. I took down bulletin boards that need to be re-done, and stacked all tables and chairs. Tomorrow will be a total paperwork day- but no kids :)

I feel relieved to no longer be experiencing everything for the first time- well once I am done with end of the year things. I loved my sweet children, but some of them I will be glad to be done saying their names 100 times a day :) I know that they will do great in first grade!!