End of Year Classroom Transformations

Long time, no blog friends!  I promise I haven't forgotten about you!  I've been a little pre-occupied with this guy...

Yep...I'm getting married!!  Is it September yet?!?!

Anywho...I wanted to share with you a couple room transformations that I have done the past couple years and never blogged about! 🙈🙈🙈

Throughout the post, you may find Amazon Affiliate links, which means Amazon tosses a few nickels my way if you purchase something through that link, at no extra cost to you, that help keep my corner of cyber-space running!

My first end of year room transformation was two years ago and we had Beach Day! I transformed our room to The Crystal Coast complete with beach sound effects on YouTube, a "sandy" beach, and a perfectly blue ocean!  Most of the materials I used for this room transformation came from Dollar Tree and Party City - so I didn't break the bank!

Sandy Beach Canvas was from Amazon

Blue Tablecloth from Party City made our ocean

Inflatables all came from Dollar Tree.

This year, I already had the Adirondack chairs as part of my flexible seating classroom - the fit Beach Day perfectly! The kids had a blast complete Beach Day centers all the while lounging around on the beach.

I collected lots of summer and beach themed books from Scholastic so they had plenty to read when they finished an activity.  Kids love to read books that are on the teacher shelf or that they never get to read! They are like gold!

Some of the centers had students sorting cards - like Fact vs. Opinion - so I got these sand shovels from Dollar Tree so students could sort them in their group.

Reading and working on arrays!

I covered our cubbies with this scene setter from Amazon! Binder clips on top and then it covered all our stuff and brought the beach to another corner of our classroom!!

It wouldn't be complete without a special snack! We had fruit cups, water bottles, and goldfish! Again, all of the cups/plates came from Dollar Tree! Make a stop before all their beach stuff gets gone!

Working on sentences by the seashore - literally! hehe

Here's a preview of the activities my kiddos were working on!

Last year, I went a totally different direction and we went CAMPING!!  The year before many of the first graders had had a beach day in 1st grade - so I had to come up with something different!  

We "CAMP" wait for Summer!  This blog post was done last year leading up to Camp Day - lots of ideas and extra resources posted there including nature sound effects on YouTube, Snack Mix, and Camping Books!

We pitched a tent on what had been my beach last year! And made a fire using sticks, rocks and tissue paper! But I didn't dare get close to it and breathe wrong - or it would have collapsed! I'm not an outdoorsy person so...not the best fire builder!

This was the reading tent! We did rotations around the classroom and each group had a round where they got to read some of the camping themed books I had found - they LOVED it! I brought a huge bear from home to stick in the tent as well as a sleeping bag to lay in the floor and make it comfy.

Each center activity had a directions card (pictured upside down in the picture above) - students could read the directions to complete the activity and then, scan the QR code to be able to access the answers to the activity! Win-Win for me! Less papers to check!

The Camp Read-A-Lot Reading tent in action!

But it wasn't all just fun...they did work too!  After they completed each activity, they earned a camp badge - like a Brag Tag! You could also print these on full sheet label papers and make them into camp badge stickers!

Do you do any fun activities or room transformations for the end of the year?!?

SaveSave