Wednesday was the last day with kiddos. They showed up at the regular time, but went home just two hours later. I crammed a lot into that short time both as a teacher and as a parent. We started our day with our morning meeting and then crammed our backpacks full of things to take home, including our end of the year scrapbook and posters from our walls. We headed across the hall to my younger daughter's classroom to do a final project with them. We created images of ourselves as first graders. One art teacher gave us some beautiful scraps we offered to the kids and they worked hard! You can see they used speech and thought bubbles as well as a range of pictures to capture themselves and their year in first grade.       As they worked on these I snuck out to see my older daughter get promoted from fifth grade to sixth grade. I hurried back to help with clean up and get ready for the school-wide dance party (an idea from one of my brilliant teammates).

Finally, at the end of the day, we all rush out to line the street entering our school and wave as cars and buses take the kids away for the summer. We've been doing this for at least a decade and it's an amazing way to end each year. 

Cross-posted from jenorr.com.