Packing Woes! (Freebie)

I am finished with end-of-year testing! Yay! Now I can start on report cards and permanent records! Once those are done I'll tackle the cumulative folders! We have 6 more days of school, but Friday we have Field Day in the morning and movie in the afternoon so it doesn't really count. Now that I have testing out of the way we can get back into our normal routine, which is good since my students were beginning to tire of all the busy work, but I have to have the room quiet while I test so I can't have them play games etc while I do it.

We got the word that our school will not house summer school this year but unfortunately that is not a reprieve from having to tear everything down, pack it up and haul it home. Our school addition is within days of getting an occupancy certificate, so we will all be shifting rooms apparently. I still have no idea what grade I'll be teaching next year, everything seems to be up in the air with several other teachers indecisive as to whether they will be coming back next year.

It is sort of a school-wide joke that I will be the last person finished cleaning up and packing my room. Every year I start out with great intentions but I can't bear to pull apart the classroom while my kiddos are still occupying it, so I end up on the last day with 90% of it still left to pack. A lot of my kiddos are reluctant for summer to start because their home lives are not the best. At least at school they get free breakfast and lunch. It seems sort of mean to start packing up the classroom and rubbing it in that school will soon be over.

Anyways, usually what happens is I start out way behind on the last day of school, struggle most of the day to try to pack, getting sidetracked, being indecisive over which box to place things in, and generally making a mess of packing. Soon everyone else leaves for the summer, locking up the building and setting the alarm so that I can't go into the hallway but can only exit through the rear door. Did I mention that I work through lunch while everyone else goes out to eat together? Yep, pretty pathetic. Eventually my husband gets off of work and comes to help - getting everything accomplished in 1/2 the time it would have taken me. Packing just is not my strong suit!

I am hoping that maybe I can go into work on Saturday and start cleaning out my closets and cupboards at least - things my kiddos won't notice. I have to do Title I and School Inventories too, so maybe I can do that on Saturday as well. Some of my coworkers have their kids play the "inventory game" finding each book etc, but I don't see that going well in my room because of of my "little teachers" would fight over who got to bring me the book! How do you handle packing up your room? Where do you store it all over the summer? I once stored everything in our garage and had packs of melted crayons and dehydrated glue bottles the following school year lol! Now I am careful to keep art supplies separate so they can go in a closet inside my house! We're not allowed to leave anything personal at school and nothing on the walls. Since 90% of my classroom is my personal stuff, it will be a chore to get it all home!

Random subject change before I work myself into a packing panic. Every year I get myself a teacher shirt with all of my kids' names on it. I plan to eventually have them all made into a quilt when I retire! I just order one of those proud-grandma-type tshirts and have it personalized with my name and my students' names. I usually get it in the spring since there is less turnover at that point, although I have learned to always ask for an extra space or two to write in a new name in case I get a new student at the last minute. I use Gift for You Now because they have a ton of cute designs that can accommodate up to 30 names! Forgive the picture quality, I took these with my phone, but here are some of my past shirts:

 

Do you have any keepsakes from each year's class? I thought this would be something my students would enjoy (they love finding their own name on the shirt) plus it would help me remember each class even years from now!

Alright, onto the freebie - this is just a little something I came up with for an end of year award - some of my kiddos were really upset not to get student of the month, seems they wanted something to hang on their wall, so I decided to put together some quick certificates. Grab them here if you'd like!

Don't forget that my giveaway ends Friday so you still have time to enter! There will be 3 winners! Click here to go to the post!