Free Virtual End of the School Year Celebrations

Y’all - the end is in sight! Summer is right around the corner! But first, it’s time for us to put our thinking caps on, to brainstorm some creative ways to virtually celebrate the end of the year with our students. Listed below are some ideas for virtual games, parties, memory books, and gifts.

Games

I don’t know about you, but I have become a Google Slide expert! There are so many fun games I like to play with my students. Some tools to help with these games include Wheel of Names, Dice, and Coin Flip. For trivia, some already composed questions can be found here. If your feeling extremely ambitious, the Family feud game instructions for students are here

Virtual Parties

With pajamas being the new business casual attire for work, there would be no planning time involved in hosting a virtual Pajama party and storytime with your students. My class has been cordially invited to a virtual Show and Tell via Zoom. Each student will have a chance to share a favorite toy, storybook, or treasured item with their classmates. Many teachers hold award ceremonies every year for their students. This can be done virtually as well. Students can view their awards on a slide show and then receive it later via email or in the mail. Some templates for personalized awards can be found here. To end the school year on with some cardio, and because I have lots of active boys in my class this year, we are hosting a virtual dance party. We will be playing all of our students’ favorites from GoNoodle! Some platforms to host virtual events include Google Meet, Zoom, and Flipgrid.

Digital Memories

Some teachers will be creating a video montage of pictures they have gathered school year. Tech tools that can be used for this are Google slides, Powerpoint, iMovie and Windows Movie Maker. A slideshow of your students’ work in a slideshow, put to music, is sure to have your students feel proud of their accomplishments this year, despite the bumps in the road.

Gifts

Some schools are scheduling time for families to drive by the school and pick up students’ personal belongings. If you wanted to assemble a gift bag to hand to your students some simple, easy to create ideas include bookmarks to encourage students to read during the summer, personalized key chains with students’ names made of colorful beads and personalized notes telling your students how they have grown this year and your wishes for them.