We don't do a graduation ceremony in Kindergarten. Our county prefers that only high school has a graduation ceremony. It keeps it special for the seniors.
So we have an ice cream social near the end of the year with our parents. We sing songs, perform a little play, and show a slideshow. Then everybody eats ice cream.
This year, our program was yesterday (phew!). It is a fun day but we are always happy when it is over. It is a lot of pressure. You never know what they will do! And at our school, it feels like the paparazzi are there! I saw some parents recording with their ipads! I did feel a little sad that they didn't get to just watch. Eventually we will have one person film, I guess, and share it with everyone.
We got to practice by showing our friends in the other classes our shows. It was fun and kind of funny to see how all of us are a little different in how we teach and sing!
Our slideshow this year was done with the tech teacher, Mrs. Scott. She used Pixie to have them photograph themselves, fill in a template of their favorite part of Kindergarten (recess and PE were big hits but a few kids said math or reading group!). The kids illustrated their sentence. When she sent me the files as jpegs (photos) I put them into powerpoint and had each child read theirs as I recorded it.
Our play was Pete the Cat. The kids recited all of the book with props and instruments. Perfect and easy! They did a great job!
We sang seven songs (some of them are really short).
Two songs we did with the ipod: One Small Voice (with sign language) by Jack Hartmann and Drive My Car by Laurie Berkner.
Then I played the guitar as they sang four songs: Out in the Garden (sung to the tune of Down at the Station), The Rainbow Connection, The RolyPoly Caterpillar (sung to the Eensy Weensy Spider), and What a Beautiful World (with sign language).
The last song was The Kindergarten Class (sung to the Addam's Family). I had the kids all fold their arms and snap like the Addam's Family. All the parents laughed. The kids of course had no idea :)
I gave my room mother/team mother a little quilt to thank her for everything she did for us this year. She was absolutely amazing! I try to make a quilt with the kids every year. This year I was out for some surgery and the families surprised me with a quilt made from the kids' t-shirts. It is really cute but I forgot to take a picture of it. It was behind us as we were singing so I know it was photographed about 200 times yesterday! oh well. If you want more info on the one we made, you can read about it on my other blog.
Here is the front:
And the back:
The kids all added their fingerprints and then made little bugs or flowers out of them.
Here's a toast to five more days! Summer here we come!
1 comments:
The quilt is lovely! Almost summer - wahoo! :)
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