Kindergarten - All Wrapped Up

School's out for summer!!  Do you think anyone around here is excited about that?  Oh yeah!  Especially me.  I'm telling you, I was so excited for the end of the school year, I felt just like a school kid myself.  No more backbacks to load.  No more lunches to pack.  No more snack packs, hot binders or homework.  Yippy!!

The last weeks of school were full of fun, games & festivities.  There was the Moving on Up production -- a celebration of surviving the trials and turmoil of Kindergarten in preparation for...well...the trials and turmoil of 1st grade.  Jake had a speaking part in the production:

"There is power in our choices,

Listen up to hear our voices."

He delivered his lines flawlessly -- thanks to all the practice sessions with Mimi & Bubba.

That was followed by field day - a morning of outdoor fun & games.  It was a bit of a drizzly day, which explains the lack of pictures.  You'll just have to trust me when I tell you that the dampness of the day didn't dampen anyone's spirits.  Jake found a new favorite game:  "ladder tennis" (aka:  ladder golf, golf toss, etc.); and he learned that he can pick up 42 marbles with his toes in 60 seconds.  Now there's a life lesson for ya!

And last, but certainly not least, there was the End of Year Party.  The entire afternoon of the last day of school was devoted to fun & games.  No cloud cover on this 100 degree day.  Just tons of sweaty fun.  It actually was a lot like field day except it took place in the afternoon, there were goody bags, and when the party was over, so was the school year.

The kids played games, had some snacks, and oh yeah...

...got tattooed!  (Yes, little sister managed to sneak into the festivities.  But boy oh boy was she unhappy to learn that she didn't get to participate in the snacking or the goody-bag-receiving.  It's so hard to be the little sister.)

Of course, no end of year party would be complete without a special gift for teacher.  The kids and I have always put together some kind of hand made something for our teachers at the end of the year.  I'd been wracking my brain for weeks to come up with something nice for Miss Lyttle.  I felt like she needed something special since this was her very first year of teaching.  In the end, I decided to get the whole class involved in the project.  Nothing too complicated...

Printing 22 kids' hands and autographs on fabric squares and then sewing them together in to a memory quilt.  Piece of cake, right?!  Actually, the minute the idea struck me I knew it was a bad one.  A great one...but a bad one.  But in the end, it all came together perfectly.  The kids were great about it.  And they did a fantastic job keeping it a secret from Miss Lyttle.

They eagerly signed their names to the outside of the package...

...and couldn't wait for Miss Lyttle to open it so they could show her their individual contributions.

Of course Jake's hand print, along with Best Buddy Andrew's, was closest to the square that read "To Miss Lyttle with Love".

She really was a great teacher, and the kids just adored her.  I hope we're as lucky with next year's teacher.  But for now, school's out for summer.  And now that we've got Kindergarten all wrapped up, let the real fun begin!!