The Last Day of School

I can’t believe it’s been one week since I last saw my onesies! I also can’t believe it’s taken me this long to blog about it. Actually I can because even though the kids were done on Thursday, teachers still had to go in on Friday for meetings about next year, and then I moved that same night. Yep. All weekend. In the what felt like 40 degree heat with high humidity and no air conditioning (yet), we gathered our friends and families and moved into our beautiful, new house! So that’s why I haven’t blogged about the last day of school yet. I’ve been busy moving, unpacking, and well…our Internet doesn’t get hooked up until tomorrow.

So how did the last day go? In our board, the kids came to school on Thursday morning and left at 11:20; just shortly after morning recess. A lot of them spoiled me with presents, so we spent part of the morning opening gifts and reading cards. Everything was so kind and thoughtful. I got lots of duck stuff (watering cans, pictures, and even yellow nail polish so that I can have nails the colour of a duck…haha!). And even though I loved each thoughtful gift, this one truly tugged on my heartstrings.

 And what did I do for them? In the past I always did the pencils and erasers thing. This year was different. This was my first class! They deserved something extra special. I bought them each a USB stick (don’t worry, I bought the cheapest ones. I’m not made of money, ya know!) and on it I put a 10 minute long slideshow that I had been working on for the past few weeks. You know all the pictures you see on the blog? I have about a kazillion more that I’ve snapped over the year. After a long time going through the pictures, organizing them by theme or event, I finally came up with a final product that effectively captured our year together in Grade One. Obviously I can’t show you the slideshow here because it has all their pictures, so just trust me that it was adorable. Yes, I’m sure they would have gone gaga over stickers, pencils, and erasers, but my hope is that they will watch this mini-movie over the years and remember all the great times they had in Grade One. It’s a nice gift for parents as well, which mine deserved because I had a great group of parents this year. They will also be missed! We watched the slideshow together right before they went outside for recess and they loved it.

After recess, I only had about an hour left with them, so we went back outside to the playground. There’s something so adorable about watching 6 and 7 year olds playing on the playground. The innocence is beautiful.

We came in right before it was time for them to go home, and to be honest, I had done a great job at keeping it together until then. But then it was time to say goodbye. I was trying to tell them that I was going to miss them, and that I wanted them to have a fun and safe summer…but…I barely got through the first part before I burst into tears, and then they all came running at me and we had a wonderful group hug. And I just kept crying. And they started crying. We all just hugged and cried. It’s hard to say goodbye to people you see 5 days a week!

And then it was over. The bell rang, and even though some hung back for 10 extra hugs and some parents popped in to say their goodbyes, the hallways were empty. My first year as a teacher was over, and I was left with nothing but amazing memories.

Thankfully, I’m right down the hall next year in a 3/4 class. I bet I’ll have a few little Grade Two visitors in the fall!

Now…off to a place with free Wifi so I can post this. T-Minus one day until we have Internet!

Enjoy the summer holidays!