1st Grade...Here We Come!

I can't believe that another year has gone by so quickly!  I am so proud of each and every one of the kindergarteners for their hard work, excitement and wonderful personalities! 

I leave the school year with one more story to share.  As kindergarten came to a close and we began to pack up our classroom, the students noticed that I had removed a painting of a tree from the hall window outside our door.  I know that they have seen this all year, and even helped rehang it every time it fell when the door was closed too hard.  However, they never asked about it, or what it meant until I took it down and placed it in a box.

I explained that before the school year started, all of the teachers and I painted pictures of trees and wrote one word that we hoped would symbolize our students' journeys in our classroom this year.  Our word was "growth."  I chose this because, to me, kindergarten is when we begin to grow into who we will become as adults.  We not only grew physically, but socially as we entered a place where we did not know anyone else and walked away a family.  We grew into readers, writers, artists, singers, athletes, mathematicians, dancers, leaders, team members and above all else friends.

I want to thank all of the kindergarteners and their families for an amazing year!  I can't wait to see how far we will grow in 1st grade!

A Teacher's Poem

I give you back your children, the same children you confidently entrusted to my care last fall. I give them back pounds heavier, inches taller, months wiser, more responsible, and more mature then they were then.

Although they would have attained this growth in spite of me, it has been my pleasure and privilege to watch their personalities unfold day by day and marvel at this splendid miracle of development.

I give they back reluctantly, for having spent ten months together in the narrow confines of our classroom, we have grown close, have become a part of each other, and we shall always retain a little of each other.

Ten years from now if we met on the street, your children and I, a light will shine to our eyes, a smile to our lips, and we shall feel the bond of understanding once more, this bond we feel today.

We have lived, loved, laughed, played, studied, learned, and enriched our lives together this year. I wish it could go on indefinitely, but give they back I must. Take care of them, for they are precious.


I shall always be their friend.

~Author Unknown