Last. week. of. school.

I feel like this year will NEVER end. Probably because all these bloggers I follow have been on summer vacay for WEEKS now. And before you go all "but you go back later and get to enjoy your summer longer" on me you are WRONG AGAIN. Because I see all you people blogging about setting up your new room and your beginning of the year activities and at that point I'm still not allowed to get into my room to START all that fun stuff.

And believe me when I say FUN because unpacking and setting up the classroom is my absolute FAVORITE part of the school year. It's all down hill after that.

I'm only half kidding.

Seriously, I like prepping for the new year so much I even BEGGED my friend Heather at The Meek Moose to let me come help her pack up her room last Saturday. My building is never open on the weekends. Or during the summer either. I got kicked out last year for trying to come back early to set up my room.

Losers.

Anyways... A small part of wanting to help out my bestie was that I finally got to see these guys up close and in person!

Eeeeek!

Last year I found this bird's nest in my yard and gave it to Heather after showing it to my class. She now uses it as part of her super cool, natural room decor. I mean she has a seriously zen classroom people. The pictures don't do it justice. As we were packing up, Heather put out the nest to see if the chicks would be interested in it. Ruby immediately settled down for a nap.

Peep was a bit too big for the nest but seemed to want her own "nest" so she was ceremoniously plopped into this basket .

Napping. Again.

The new chick wants to cuddle with Peep.

Now for the rest of my post. Which is supposed to be about all the great things I'm making my kids do for the last week of school. You know, that time after report cards and gradebooks are due and it doesn't really count as "instructional" time.

For the first time in my life, I over-planned. I decided to have my kids work on Reader's Theater projects this week and so I spent my weekend searching for just the right plays for my kids and planning out the groups and props and what-not. I also knew that at some point I wanted my kids to do this great Summer Bucket List booklet so I had that already copied and ready to go.

But then at like 10:30 PM on Sunday night it HAPPENED.
I got... an IDEA.

I remembered a project MY second grade teacher did with my class where she had each student write a note and decorate a pattern to look like each of their classmates. After all the people were cut out, they were stapled together into a cute little note book for each student. She did it as a birthday activity so you were only doing one kid at a time and it was spread out throughout the year. I didn't think of it until just now so I decided to see if we could do it on a larger scale.

I even had my book in a scrapbook so I took it into school to show my kids. The birthday girl (ME) made the front and back cover.

Every student in the class decorated and wrote a page. The teacher also completed one and my mother, who I guess was at school that day to pass out cupcakes or something.

The back cover.

So I made the little people outlines and copied 24 for each of my students. I thought it would maybe take 2 days. Tops. And only using Language Arts time.

WRONG

I also thought my kids would get sick of it. And start whining "do we have to do them ALLLLLL"

WRONG

They spent all of Monday and all of Tuesday working on this project. And I mean the whole day. The reader's theater and Summer Bucket List haven't been touched. My goal is to get them finished tomorrow so that they will be put-together for students to take home on Thursday. As in THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL.

Here's the unholy mess of kids on my reading table. Trying to keep some kind of order.

Can't wait to send these babies on their way, but full well knowing that I'll get to have most of them in my class again next year :).