Well, it's over. My first year in first grade is behind me. I loved every minute of it and I'm already excited at the possibilities for next year! The last day of school for the kiddos was Friday. It was an early release day, so we said our goodbyes at noon. We went out with a bang, of course ;-)
When I taught middle school, my students loved playing Minute to Win It on the last day of school. I thought my firsties would have fun doing it too if I simplified things a bit. I found some Minute to Win It clips on YouTube and, after lunch each day of the last week of school, we watched a couple of games and tried them out. Then, on Friday we played our hearts out! If you are not familiar with Minute to Win It, you have one minute to complete a deceptively difficult task. Here's a few pics of our favorite games. Please excuse my mess; I had started cleaning and packing my room.
#1 Use a tape measure, small ball, and a mini glass (errrr...a shot glass). Roll the ball down the measuring tape and into the glass to win. This was a crowd favorite!
#2 Use a stream of water to push a balloon into a basket. Tricky, tricky, but so much fun!
#3 Alternate paper plates and plastic cups to build a tower ten plates and ten cups high.
#4 Use cheerios to build a tower ten cheerios high. On the game show, contestants stacked apples five high to win, but I forgot my apples at home. I made a substitution of cheerios because I had the cereal left over from the bird feeders we made earlier in the week.
#5 Keep the balloon off the floor by tapping it back and forth between partners. It took 20 consecutive taps to win.
There were more games, but I was too busy timing, giggling hysterically, and playing referee to take pics of them all.
Last week I posted about a foil fish activity I was planning for the last week of school. Well, the fish turned out great! My partner teacher thought the fish looked like the fish in The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. So we combined the book, the foil art, and a related writing prompt into a lesson about individuality.
The book is about a beautiful fish who finds friendship and happiness when he learns to share. The books teaches the value of being an individual. The fish in the story has distinctive shiny scales.
Here's how our fish turned out:
We used black sharpies and a guided draw to complete the outline of the fish, then brightly colored sharpies to fill in our fish.
It feels like today was the first day of summer vacation (even though I have a work day on Monday), so me and my little sharks hit the pool for a couple of hours and we have a zoo trip planned tomorrow.
Enjoy your summer vacation!
The minute to win it activities sound like a lot of fun - it's something i'm going to try out at then end of the year. Fish look great too!
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