The time has finally come to end the school year. Here are the events as follows…

The Final Drama Performance:

The last big project for us was to put together a final performance for the spring show. The kids had three performances in Chinese. Each class had their own song, then a group poem with all three classes, a music performance, and one English performance. I know, it’s a lot for kindergarten-aged kids. This was our concern during the winter performance, and we had the same concerns this time around.

For the English performance, we decided we wanted all three classes to do parts of the same play. I finally came up with the idea of doing the story “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” and we renamed it “CASA With a Chance of Meatballs.” The performance practices took about three weeks, and most of our class time was dedicated to this. I had a difficult time getting the kids to concentrate after the first few classes. I think some of it had to do with being burned out from practicing for their other routines. It was quite frustrating, though, for me. After the performance, I realized how I should have done things differently, as my kids seemed to have the most problems remembering when to say their lines during the middle portion of our part. But the parents liked the show, so that’s what counts.

After that was finished, we had our graduation ceremony and handed out flowers, gifts, and spelling bee awards. That meant that for the last two weeks (yes, there were still two more weeks of school to go before ending), we had to figure out what to fill the time with. The first week was mostly spent doing crafts. The final week was dedicated to different themed parties each day.

I did find something from the website “Twinkl” to help the kids do some writing about their school year.

One of the parents bought a bilingual book for the class. However, I’m not sure it was a parent who spoke English because the languages of the book are Chinese and French. Anyway, it’s a book about mythical creatures and beasts. One of the pages talks about the “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch” creature. In the photo, it has a picture of a man standing next to it. For some reason, the kids asked jokingly if it was me. I said “no.” Then they asked if it was my grandpa. Me being the person that loves to mess around with kids heads (as any teacher needs to do from time to time in order to maintain their own sanity), I told them “yes.” They seemed fascinated, and I’m not sure if some of them actually believed it or not, but I never said “no.”

The first party theme was water, which meant going outside to play with water guns. I decided that I would buy the biggest water gun I could find on Taobao, and I did. This was a once-in-a lifetime chance to take out my stress and have fun at the same time, and chasing after the kids and dousing them with water was the perfect outlet.

Another party we had was an ice cream party. Pretty self-explanatory.

Then there was the fruit party. This not only included fruit to eat but also bringing in a juicer.

The final party theme was a pajama party. Nothing complex, just wearing their PJs and watching a movie.

One of my best (and yes, favorite) students was Kaylee. She was the superstar prodigy of the class. She made me a sweet little goodbye card.

Finally, on the very last day, all but six of the students showed up. Towards the end of the half-day, some of the kids did some serenading with a ukulele 🙂

One of the kids pictured above (Ken) wore the same matching shirt with his mom.

It has been a year full of laughs, noise, shouting, fights, hugs, making messes, playing, and everything in between. Though it has been great seeing the kids grow and progress, both my co-homeroom teacher and I are glad it’s over. The stress caused by three of our students has really taken its toll on us. The two nightmare students didn’t show up on the last day (a half day). It was as though they were like reoccurring tornadoes that caused devastation and chaos, then suddenly disappeared without a trace, like had ever happened. We teachers were told that next year we will have different teaching units as some teachers will leave and others will be taken in from the CASA group. We certainly hope next year will be better, considering all of the changes that have taken place in just one semester.