Beach Ball Books

It's hard to believe that it is the end of the year!

Time sure flies.

I've been working on my "end of the year list" lately. Which is a list of all things that need to get completed by the end of the year.

My name is Kristina, and I am OCD.

I joke, but this list has seriously helped me out the past 2-3 years I've used it.

About 3 years ago, or maybe 4 (who knows), I started making a list of everything I was doing before the end of school. Such as: testing for report cards, filling out cumulative records, getting inventory ready, finalizing awards, etc. And in the years since, I just pull up my list, usually starting after Spring Break in March, and start working on crossing a couple things off my list each week.

Each year I may add a few things, delete a few things, or modify a few things. But it mostly remains the same.

Now there are some things that you really can't complete until the actual end of the year, like attendance. But there are plenty of things that can be worked on in advance.

So one of the things that I start working on in April are my beach ball books. Before I refined my PowerPoint skills, they were a little sad. There was a beach ball on the cover, that I drew, and pages for kids to draw pictures. And that was about it.

Now that I have a ridiculous amount of clipart, I decided that these books need a complete overhaul this year.

And tada!

I love how they turned out!

There are 2 sets of covers, one for boys and one for girls, and 10 different pages for the kids to fill out and illustrate.

There's also an autograph page.

These covers make me happy.

And they make me want to go to the beach!

I also made covers for Pre-K and 1st Grade as well.

Here are the different pages included.

- My favorite center

-My favorite friend

- My favorite class

- My favorite thing we learned

- My favorite book

- My favorite thing to play at recess

- My favorite thing we did

- I will miss

- The best thing about Kindergarten (there are pre-K and 1st versions too)

- My Teacher

I included a lot of pages, that way you can pick and choose the ones that work for you, or complete them all.

On the autograph page, I would recommend making one original copy, have students sign their names, and then make enough copies for the entire class from the original copy with the names.

Did that make sense?

This way each child doesn't have to write their name 20+ times.

Since these books are on half sheets, there are only 10 lines on each page for signatures, so if you have around 20 kids in your classroom, you may need 2-3 autograph pages.

My kids still write pretty big sometimes, so I wanted to make sure they had enough room to write their names without taking away someone else's space.

We made the covers and I bound the books together a few weeks ago. But then I got busy with progress reports and DVD making, so they went on the backburner until this week.

So we worked on 2 pages each day. Or at least, that was the plan.

Next year, I'll probably let my kids do their own writing. Unfortunately, we were a little pressed for time this week. So I did the writing for them.

I love that her favorite book we read was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

I had planned to complete the last 2 pages on Friday. But we were able to get a 30min session in the computer lab so that my kids could take their final STAR Early Literacy test. Which I was very thankful for!

But I forgot all about the Beach Ball Books. So we'll finish the last 2 pages up on Monday.