Looking for an awesome end-of-the-year crafitivy? Make some graduation kids! I designed this last weekend and loved making them with my class on Monday... they turned out SO cute! You can get all my patterns and directions on TPT.
First, I went ahead and cut out the gowns myself- it took only a few minutes cause I did about 5 at once. The pattern for this is included in the TPT packet. I did a variety of colors, but you could choose your school colors, traditional black, or anything!
I ran the copies of my patterns on colored construction paper. I wasn't sure if this would work with black construction paper, but as you can see- no problem!
Side note-- I realized after we made these that mt head pattern needed some shoulders. All my graduation kids enbed up looking a little football player-ish because the neck got buried in the gown. SO- fyi, I adjusted that and fixed it in my TPT pattern so if you try this with your class, your kids will look even better! :) Ha!
I let them design their own faces and hair. They attached their writing page to the front of the gown. The packet on TPT has several writing options for each grade: preschool, Kindergarten, and 1st grade. I used one with several blanks ("Kindergarten was ______! I'll always remember ________. Over the summer I plan to _________.") but several other options are included, too.
Enjoy these sweet examples. I have them all hanging in a line in the hall now and everyone is freaking out about how CUTE they are!
btw, we are doing an end of the year author celebration where parents come and we share our autobiographies that we've written (I have a template for it here), sing songs, and share treats. We're so excited!
I have done the "1st grade, 1st grade" song to the tune of New York, New York before and LOVE it... but I JUST discovered the Kindergarten graduation song to the tune of Summer Nights from Grease. omg. Have you heard it? SO great. I think we might need to start learning that one tomorrow! If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out this video (not my class, but so inspirational for how I want mine to be!)
If you want to learn more about the autobiographies... they're turning out so great! I just created a simple parent note to ask them for a little info about their child's birth, babyhood, toddlerhood, and pre-school. Everyone returned it and we loved hearing and laughing about each other's little stories. We used that info to guide us as we wrote these pages because the kids would have had trouble remembering details of those times on their own.
I let them do their own pages about Kindergarten, what they're good at, what they want to be when they grow up, who they want to thank for helping them get to where they are today... they turned out SO cute! You could have them just fill in the blanks in the book I created for them to write in and call it done! But I took it one step further... my team bought these blank "bare books," I typed up the words and kids cut them out, glued them in and illustrated so they end up creating a nice hardcover book to keep forever! Here are a few quick examples of a few pages in progress ...
Well, enjoy! Happy Summer, teachers! I hope this post gave you a few ideas on how to celebrate the end of the school year in Kindergarten!!
