ABC (26 Day Countdown) to the end of the year!!

Ahhhh, Saturday!!  Fun things happen on Saturday!!  Sleeping, soccer games, and :

We love linking up with Joanne for her student motivation linky!!

Here is something we do at the end of the year as we countdown the last days in 4th grade.  Of course, you can use this in any grade, but for us, it's 4th.  (This was NOT my original idea- some wonderful teacher thought of it- but my school was doing it already when I came so I don't know it's origination!)

This is our countdown calendar.  We counted from the last day of school up for 26 days (the number of letters in the alphabet).  Then we started there.  For us, it started on Wednesday this past week.  For each letter, we do something fun that day.  You'd be surprised at how excited they get for each day!!  

We tried to make it so that the students were responsible for remembering to bring in what they needed each day this year because it can get expensive if you have to buy a bunch of items for several days during the countdown.  Of course, this works a little more easily for upper grades because they can remember.  

We had a few parents donate the Koolaid juice boxes for K, the Dum Dums for L, and the Popcorn for P.  But other than that, it all comes in with the child.

We had bubble gum day on Thursday and they were really excited about that.  Of course, my rules of no popping the gum, touching it with their fingers, or blowing bubbles probably were in full effect, but they didn't seem to mind too much!! No gum smacking aloud!!  ;O)

I'm excited about J day because the teachers on our grade level are getting together a play list of some songs that we are going to play randomly throughout the day for the students.  One of the teachers has NSYNC on her playlist!  We are going to make it fun (and funny!) and tell the students whose playlist it came from!  I'm excited about it!

I uploaded this as a google doc (just click the picture) so you can change it if you would like to use it.  It's a simple way to motivate them to continue to behave (nobody wanted to lose the opportunity to chew bubble gum!) and it's a fun way to countdown to the last day of school!!

How do you countdown to the end of school?

Amanda

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