During the last few weeks of PreK, I can feel the difference in my classroom. The children are all a buzz with kindergarten talk and they can barely focus on ANYTHING else!
I love their excitement and want to send them off with happy memories of each other and their experiences in PreK. When I first opened my school, I started a tradition in my classroom and called it Memory Day.
Getting Ready for Memory Day
To prepare for Memory Day, I gathered up the book, “Once Upon a Memory” by Nina Laden and our memory stone. Miss Lauren painted a stone a few years ago and elegantly painted the words “I remember” on the stone.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t remember where we put the stone so I used a stone that one of my students painted for me instead. I also gathered up a set of basic white t-shirts, fabric markers, and cardboard. And as an extra idea to try, I ordered each child a set of 9 school pictures from Walgreens.
Celebrating Memory Day
Once the children arrived to school and settled in, we talked about things we remember. One of my little girls brought a photo album from home so we used it talk about how we use pictures to help us remember things like what we looked like when we were little.
Then we read our book and passed around our memory stone. As each child held the stone, they shared one thing they remembered. I actually was hoping they could tell me one thing they remembered about PreK but instead they told me something they remembered from home.
Once the children shared their memories, they headed off to trade school pictures with each other and to sign each other’s memory t-shirts. It was a good way to sneak in a little name writing practice for the day.
Do you have a favorite end of the school year tradition? I would love for you to tell us about it in the comments below!