End of the Year Memories!

May 15, 2017

At the end of the year we always created a memory book of some sort. I love to reminisce with my students. 180 days together is no joke and should be celebrated before they head off to their next teacher! Instead of just filling in a memory book on the last week of school, I thought another fun way to share our memories would be through an entire Memory Day!

All these activities are part of a fun new product I came out with for the end of the year called Countdown to Summer! This is a 5 day all-encompassing unit which includes lessons and activities for every subject area! There is MORE than enough for you to have boatloads of fun during the last days of school while still reviewing and learning!

Here is a little sneak peek of what I included for Day 4, Memory Day:

Math:

telling time to the hour and half hour

The main game included for this day is “memory” where students match the digital and analog times! However, with all the themes in this unit, I include a black and white, little-to-no prep activity as well which is shown above! This game practices the same skills as students race to fill their clock tower first.

Phonics:

r-controlled vowels

Students take a walk down memory lane with this fun memory poem. As they read it, they will try to identify as many r-controlled vowels as they can find. There is also a nonsense/real word sorting sheet afterwards that they can complete. This is set up exactly like all my phonics poems, so if you already own that your students will be very familiar with this set up!

Reading:

Comprehension and connections

Students listen to Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox and answer text-dependent questions using the read aloud one-page guide. There is also a reading response sheet for them to compel tee afterwards to show understanding of the text!

Writing:

opinion writing

Students share their opinion of their favorite activity from their year. They must provide three reasons why it was simply the best!

Social Studies/Science:

Learning about our brain

This fun lesson has students learning all about their brains! Students learn a bit about the lobes of our brain before they complete a fun puzzle activity. Students will learn that in order to complete puzzles they are actually using their frontal lobe which is important for problem solving. After the mini-puzzles are put together, students must share a memory that is brought to mind by the image. This uses their hippocampus which stores long term memories!

Snack/Craft:

Memory munchkins and a memory frame

I went super simple with this snack – Memory munchkins! I always provide breakfast on our last day of school and I would give each student one munchkin. We would go around in groups and before they could eat their donut hole, they had to tell their group all about a favorite memory of theirs. Since an entire breakfast isn’t provided here, I went with 3-4 munchkins and provided a few guidelines to sharing their memories with one another! I also opted for a memory frame instead of a whole book since students would be sharing their memories all day long!

There are 5 days filled with lesson and activities total with the following themes:

Camping
Friendship
Sports

Memories

The Beach

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Looking for some FUN ways to keep your students engaged at the end of the year?! These themed activities have students learning and reviewing up until that last day all while sharing some of their favorite memories with the class!

You can grab all the activities seen above as well as 4 more days of FUN all in my Countdown to Summer unit seen below:

Writing

Reading

Math