I can’t believe the school year is almost over! I don’t know about your class but ours is getting chattier (is that even a word?!?!) by the day. To try and make the last month exciting and try to curb behavior I decided to create an ABC Countdown to the end of the school year.
I got the inspiration from Pinterest and Instagram but put my own spin on it. Most of the countdowns I have seen on Pinterest and Instagram have been the balloon popping countdowns, you know the ones where you pop a balloon each day with a different activity. Well, this year, we have a couple students who are really bothered by loud sounds and the popping of balloons would be too much for them to handle.
A few years ago I was on our schools PBIS committee and was one of the people in charge of the staff fun day that we hold for our professional development usually in February. That year we did a version of Let’s make a deal using a punch out board.
Instead of popping balloons each day I created our own punch board for the 26 days of school. I was so excited to get it started that I forgot to take a picture of it before we started using it. Truth be told, Sunday afternoon I thought about doing this countdown and then counted on my phone how many days left with kids and low and behold it was 26. Talk about a late night on Sunday! By the time I went to Dollar Tree is was 6:55 and the store closes at 7 on Sundays, who knew?!?! Needless to say I was able to quickly get the supplies on my list and get out of there without any additional items (which is normally not what happens when I go to Dollar Tree).
How I made the punch out box: I got the general instructions on how to make this from Pink and Green Mama who found it from : Celebrate the Big and Small. Actually I just read the instructions from Celebrate the Big and Small and I probably should have created mine like that, seems so much easier. BUT when do I do things the easy way? I cut off the side of a box (Walmart that had been shipped from my mom at one time) and laid out my cups how I wanted them on top. I traced the cup lids and then cut out each circle trying to cut just a smidge smaller than the circle I traced. After trial and error with wrapping the gift wrap around my hideous looking brown box I found the best way to decorate it was to cut the holes first and then wrap one side with wrapping paper. I then turned the box over and cut a t in the middle of the holes and folded the wrapping paper up around the holes and taped it down. (Right now I really wish I took pictures while I was doing this) Then I took tissue paper and taped it down one color per row. My 6 year old wrote out some of the reward slips and I glued the cup down over the correct hold, don’t forget to add the slip of paper with the reward, A is for Art, etc… Each day I pick a different student to “punch” a hole out. We do our reward time at the end of the day after specials and then I have them punch out the next days activities before they leave so they can get excited for tomorrow.
I also sent home a note to the parents explaining what we were doing. Here is the note and you should hopefully be able to edit it (I admit I’m not very good at attaching things that can be edited so sorry in advance!) end of year abc countdown If for some reason you can’t get it to work give me your email address and I will send it to you.
I am absent minded and forgot to take pictures of the kids completing their A is for Art Mother Day gifts so here is a picture of the final product:
Here are some pictures from B is for Bubbles. We created tennis rackets with plates and craft sticks and kept them up in the air. At the end we went outside and popped them. Don’t worry I gave them each a balloon to take home, not inflated of course!
My Attempts at Being Creative! 
