Creative Classroom Celebrations

Having an end of the year party? Here are some great ideas - some best used for specific holidays or seasons.

     

Food

Many schools have adopted low sugar / low salt party policies for parties and birthdays. My room parents of 2007-2008 gave me the great idea to theme the food along with the party. For example, we ate all red fruits and vegetables on Valentine's Day and all green vegetables on St. Patrick's Day. Before Memorial Day, you can use cookie cutters to make stars out of pineapple like in this picture. Try dipping fruit in yogurt and freezing it instead of using chocolate. You can also replace the blue strawberries with blueberries.

Check out this chart for other ideas!

Repurposing and recycling to make table decorations

    

For Earth Day, we used newspaper for table cloths. We used the flowers we had grown from seed that were planted in newspaper pulp pots we had made. Our table confetti was made from paper we had made and imbedded with seeds so that they could be planted later. Students made picture frames using recycled cardboard and puzzle pieces from boxes that were missing pieces.

(Note that these are not my pictures, I didn't think to take my own!)

Check out my website for lesson plans and websites for teacher and student use.

Book Swap!

The end of the school year is a perfect time for a book swap. Both students and teachers will enjoy having a new book or two to read over the summer. It's not too late, even with a few weeks of school left! Usually our school collects unwanted books for months, but all you have to do is send out a school-wide note asking students to bring in at least one unwanted book. In the past, my librarian or PTO have run it. All you need is a few tables for books to be displayed and organized by reading level or topic, a simple schedule of when students can come in with their classes, and viola! If you're worried about not having enough books, ask teachers to clean out their bookshelves of any unwanted books or stop by a garage sale. If you explain that the books will go to students, they may even let you take them for free! It's a perfect way to recycle books instead of having them go into a landfill. You can set up a permanent table in the teacher's room so adults can swap their books all year round! Our school decided to donate leftover books to Louisiana, a tradition since Hurricane Katrina.

And that segways into my next blog, hurricanes and tornadoes......stay tuned!