Each classroom at our school has their own theme. Our theme is 'Navigators' (hence the name of the blog). I decided to go with the theme of the classroom for our final celebration, which I nick-named a "sail"ebration. Since it was the last one I decided to actually decorate. Normally I don't, because in my head who really cares what the classroom looks like as long as we get ample amounts of chocolate?! However, when my students came in after specials and saw the table all set up they were so excited that I may have to rethink that logic. Here is a picture of the finished tablescape. Please don't judge the messy shelf behind it. That's my pile of paperwork that needs to be sorted and filed once students are gone and I have a second to just sit and organize myself.
Much of this stuff I had on hand. The table cloth is one I pull out for every celebration. We only have a few class parties--once for winter break (aka Christmas) another in January to celebrate Chinese New Year, February for Valentines day and May for the end of the year. Red goes for every holiday so buying a nicer vinyl tablecloth was totally worth it as I can reuse it over and over, versus having to buy a new one each time.
The sailboat/chip holder I found at Jo-Ann Fabrics. It was on clearance and is actually a flower pot. I just bought a dowel that fit inside it and made my own sail. I actually made a bunch of different sails, one for each celebration. My students were pretty excited about it.
Another thing I did was I had my students wrap up all the spoons inside my napkins, and tie them with life savers to look like life preservers. I got the idea here.
Continuing with the theme, we each made origami boats and set them out next to a few cups filled with candy. Students used the boats as candy dishes and scooped all the candy they wanted into their boat. They thought that was cool. However, doing even simple origami on the last day of school was a little hectic. Next year I may have them make the boats earlier in the week when they aren't quite as distracted...
To finish off the decorations, I had my students make tissue paper poms and we hung them up along with streamers. Here is the finished result:
The food was donated by parents. I assigned what they should bring in. It worked pretty well, we had a nice variety of things, although we had a lot of left overs. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to organize food for classroom parties. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!
For activities at the party, my students wanted to play pin the tail on the donkey. To go with our theme I switched it to 'Pin the Nose of the Sailor'. I found a picture of a sailor I liked online and drew it out and painted it with water colors. I also painted 16 noses. I laminated them so that I could use them again next year. This also allowed students to write their names on the nose with dry erase markers while they played. They loved it! Hopefully next year I'll think of more, but for this year, this was the only nautical themed game I had. Other than that I just let them play any of our classroom games. They had a great time! The laid-back schedule also gave me time to talk to the parents/families and thank them personally for their overwhelming support this year. I was one lucky teacher to have such great students and families!
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