Those of you that have been following me for awhile know that I always greet my students on back to school night with a goodie bag with a welcome poem, which I also have in Owl Version if polka dots aren't your thing.
My Welcome Poem can be viewed here: Welcome Back Poem Filled With Goodies
This year, I decided that I would end the year the same way that I started it, but I wanted it to be more specific. The welcome poem is a poem that has been getting passed around for years, with no clear creator. Over the years, I've revised it to make it work for me, but I wanted to create my own poem that would be specific to my own students. I posted my first version here: End of Year Poem for Goodie Bag. Since then, I've had lots of people ask me where I got the Fun Dip, which I found out the hard way is not easy to find, so I had to order $12 worth from Amazon, an action I would like to not repeat next year. Needless to say, I reworked the poem that is on TpT a bit and came up with a new one that I've already posted. It's not too different, except that I've changed the "fun" to "mounds of fun," because Mounds are about 1,000 times easier to find than small packets of Fun Dip. I also added a couplet that uses "pop" so that a lollipop could be added.
The end of the year poem now looks like this:
The one I made for my class was a bit different from the one I have on TpT, as I wanted it to reflect our own personal experience, so I added some items that were specific to our year together, like purple pens, which we use for revising and editing, M&M's to represent a beginning of the year activity, and butter cups, because I'm always saying, "What's up, buttercup?" Here's what the final product looked like this year:
Please note that Cry-babies, Smarties, and Sweet-Tart chews can be found at the Dollar Store! That almost makes up for the $12 Fun Dip...
Instead of placing these on their desks like I did at the beginning of the year, I waited until right after their 5th grade promotion ceremony. When we were all back in the classroom, I made a little speech about our time together and then I proceeded to read the poem aloud before passing out the bags. As it turns out, the Cry-babies that I chose to represent the "sour" in the poem, could've also been used to describe their teacher when she read the poem aloud. There may or may not have been big, giant tears and tissues involved.
The bag was a hit. The best part is that the item that they were the most excited about was the purple pen. I made purple pens a highly demanded item, you're welcome, Bic! I'm glad I did the goodie bag to wrap things up, and proud to have a completely original poem creation. My 5th graders think I'm a super awesome poet. I hope that they know that I wouldn't be without their inspiration. :-)
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