The last days of school can be chaotic, preparing to move classrooms, tidying up wall displays, taking down wall displays, moving and marking mountains of paperwork, managing your class whilst preparing for an entirely new class and basically working down a checklist that is as long as time itself! To end the school year on a high, here we have just a few ways you could spend the very last day with your students…
Make some memories
Make some memories by creating class memory books that are easy. You can create simple printable worksheets or download our pre-made ones for students to complete and staple together as a book. Have them write down favourite memories, draw pictures of the classroom, and sign autographs for each other. If you have time, (or one that you have taken earlier) you could even include a class picture on the cover!
Tidy up Races
You can use the boundless energy that the students have to take down posters, scrub desks, shred old worksheets, or pack up books. To avoid the groans, make it a game or a race – divide the class into teams and see which team can complete its tasks first to win a prize.
Play learning games
If your classroom is stocked with a variety of educational games, now is a good time to pull them out for entertainment. Organise game centres around the classroom and allow students to pick which ones they would like. Set a timer and have groups rotate from one activity to another periodically.
Autograph and draw on Items
This is a nice way to spend the last day of school and has caught on in popularity. You can either have your students autograph a plain dress or ask your students to draw pictures on a t-shirt/dress/teddy bear (depending on the age of your class) or whatever your heart desires. You can always ask parents if they may be able to bring in an item that could be written on, so the children can write messages and draw pictures between themselves! You can pin these up in the classroom or keep them as lovely souvenirs!
Adlibs and Charades
Ad-libs
Develop a list of silly topics, one for each child, and put them in a jar. Have each student pull a topic and give them a minute or two before calling them up. Encourage the students to get creative with fun topics like “what would you do if you were the prime minister” or “convince us to buy your shoes.”
Charades-School Edition
You could have your pupils draw upon events or funny things that have happened through the year, write them down and put them in a jar, then get one student to pick one out and act out the funny thing or event and see if the rest of the class can guess. You can always use other categories such as animals, places etc, check out these ideas from the Kids Activities website.
If you don’t like this idea or nothing springs to mind for the students, you can always just do regular charades!
Friendship Tokens
Your students may be slightly sad that they may not see their classmates for a couple of weeks over the holidays, you could encourage them to create a token of friendship. This could include:
- Writing a poem, funny limerick or rap about their friend
- Making a friendship bracelet, necklace or bookmark
- Creating a catchy song about their friend
Let your pupils decide how they would like to show they appreciate their friends.
Have an awards ceremony
Have ready-made awards to hand out to students, you can download and print our example here for anything and everything they have done this term. It will make for a great end to the calendar year and boost the student’s self-esteem, you can make the awards as formal or as silly as you like (you can add some sweet treats in there too ).
