Do your children have any end of the school year traditions? I've heard all sorts of ways that kids, even homeschool kids celebrate the ending of a school year and the beginning of their summer break. Today, I will share with you some of the ways we've made that time special for the kids, along with the one activity that our kids never fail to enjoy at the end of their school year.
End of the Year Feast
As we complete our history units, we end each one with a special supper with dishes from that time period. The kids all enjoy cooking with Daddy in the kitchen on those evenings, and they have even been willing to try foods they would have never agreed to eat if it wasn't a popular dish of the ancient Egyptians or something the pioneers enjoyed. Likewise, at the end of our school year we have a big feast. Sometimes that means our final history meal, but sometimes that means they get to pick the courses, and help prepare them. This year's meal did require some limits after year before last's when they together chose crab legs, bacon wrapped scallops, and lobster tails. With that sort of menu a sale ad can only go so far.
Celebratory Field Trip
Another way we have celebrated the end of our school year, is by taking the final day or the following day to take a field trip to study something we've been studying. Occasionally that's even meant that we start a family vacation the next day. Whether it's as low key as taking everyone bowling on summer free bowl passes and coming home for a picnic lunch or ice cream. Or whether it was the year that we set off for Texas a few days later and saw the Alamo in preparation for this year's history studies. The kids always enjoy the chance to get out of the house and do something special as an entire family. Since Daddy most often doesn't accompany us on our field trips, they always enjoy when everyone can do an activity together.
Bookend Activities
This isn't something personally that we have done, but I know lots of families like to do bookend activities both at the beginning and the ending of the school year. They get pictures on both the first and last day of a new school year. Maybe they start and finish the year with a pancake breakfast. Or they complete an about them quiz and compare their answers from before the school year to after it is over with questions such as "What are you most looking forward to this school year?" and "What was your favorite part of this school year?" I've seen families take handprints on a sheet of paper and compare to see how much they've grown. The ideas are endless.
Book Burning
Yes, I promise you read that right. Of all the possible end of the year school traditions, my children's very favorite, without which no school year is truly complete, is to hold an annual book burning. One year I threw away the old workbooks to much rioting and gnashing of teeth. I actually had to go back and get the garbage bag from under other garbage bags out of the garbage can and fish them out to be burned. Gag, it was so gross. I have never made that mistake again. We don't always burn them our last day of school, after all I have to get out samples to go into their portfolios first and sometimes we have summer trips to the grandparents planned, so that burning has to be on a night when everyone is home. But they make a big to do of throwing in their math workbooks, along with any other materials we aren't saving. They dance around shouting like a bunch of lunatics and then roast marshmallows over the ashes of pre-Algebra.
End of the School Year Traditions
Whatever your family chooses to do, it's nice to make a little something out of the occasion. The kids enjoy marking their hard work and in the case of our three oldest, getting revenge on the math that gave them such trouble during the school year.
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