Like a lot of the rest of the country, Texas schools are not resuming their 2019-2020 year in the classroom. They will continue distance learning until the last day of the school year.
I personally have been prepping my first grader of this possibility from the very beginning, so the news did not come as a shock to him, and he rolled with it pretty well. He did say that it made him sad that he did not get to really say goodbye to his class, his teacher and his friends.
I feel the same way, although I am happy to keep him home if that means keeping him and others safe. I do mourn the loss of that final goodbye and the closing of the chapter of his first-grade year. If only I had known that that last Friday was going to be it, we would have done things differently!
BUT, as I have said to many in the past month, it is okay to mourn the things we have lost or are missing, but we can not live in that place. We have to look forward and find the positives! I know, for me, when I am anxious or frustrated, my kids feed off of that and it can really make the days unpleasant for all of us!
So, in that spirit, I want us to have a plan to CELEBRATE the end of the school year: that moment when we reach that last day of #quarantineschool!
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Below are some of my ideas to commemorate and make it special, and feel like you have that closure that we all like to have at the end of a year!
Have Your Own Family Field Day at Home
Many schools choose to have a “field day” that last week of school. Since we can not have one as a class, we can have one as a family. Set up games and activities all-around your house and compete as a family. You could choose teams or let everyone compete individually. Find some inspiration for games here.
Screaming Good Year Craft

I found this idea on Pinterest and thought it could be a really good project for kids to do at home to talk about their feelings about the year and remember their favorite parts of the year! Then you could take a picture and send it to your child’s teacher. And while the project caters to smaller kids, I think this would be a great family project for all ages. We are all having big feelings during this season of uncertainty and what better way to show our kids {of all ages} the different ways that we feel, and process those feelings and that we are all missing something right now!
Here is a FREE PRINTABLE to use.
Steps to Create your Craft:
- You will take a picture of your kids individually acting like they are yelling. I found doing it in front of a blank background is helpful but you are going to cut them out so the background is not important. I printed the pictures in color using my regular printer. If you are fancy and can print on picture paper that will make it even better!
- Print the speech bubble to write on and glue your picture, you can use the FREE PRINTABLE above.
- Have your kids (or the whole family) write what their favorite parts of the school year have been. My kids choose to find 3 of their favorite parts and then drew a little picture at the bottom of their page.
- Cut around the outline of your child and glue to the page to look like they are YELLING what they wrote!
Original project idea from Teacher Idea Factory
Have an End of School Picnic
I don’t know about you but my kids love to have picnics. For them, if we are eating anywhere other than a table it is designated as a picnic and they think it is the best meal they have ever eaten.
What better way to celebrate the end of school than to have a family picnic. And you have so many different options! Find a place in your yard to lay down the blankets and picnic outside, you can lay down blankets on the floor of your living room and have an indoor picnic.
Then for the food, you can get creative and have “school” themed snacks. Apples for your teacher, favorite school lunch milk, etc. Or you can ask them what their favorite lunch was to eat at school and you can all have their favorite school lunch for your picnic. Then spend time as a family talking about what their favorite parts of the school year were, their least favorite parts, what they have liked and disliked about school at home and what they look forward to for next year!
Ask your Childs Teacher(s) to Send them a Letter
For our family, we have a bible that we purchased for our son when he started Kindergarten. Each year we planned to have his teachers sign the bible and maybe share their favorite scriptures. Then when he graduates high school we plan to gift that bible to him.
This year we are not going to be able to have his teacher sign it so I plan to ask her to write him a letter instead and either email it to me or mail it to us. That way I can place it in the bible for him to read on graduation night in 11 years.
Even if you have not started this tradition, you could always as your teachers to send you letters for your kids to read on their “last day of school.”
Have an End of School Honk Parade
You may have seen this new trend coming out of the quarantine for those that have a kiddo celebrating a birthday they are inviting their friends and family to drive by their home and have a HONK PARADE to celebrate their birthday boy/girl! Our family has participated in a few of these over the last month and they are probably one of my favorite things to come out of this time of social distancing!
They are super easy to organize, and it takes maybe 10 mins from start to finish!
So taking this idea and using it for the end of the year would be a super fun way to celebrate. You can reach out to your teacher and the parents of your child’s class, pick a central location or someone’s home, pick a date and time and everyone drives by honks, waves and safely celebrates their time together and moving on to summer!
You could even go further to see if the administration would organize a school-wide parade to go in front of the school, this would take a little more time and organization but I think it would be SO FUN for the kids to participate in!