25 days, that is my number. The number of school days left until summer vacay, wow! It will be bittersweet because I love my group of kids, but I am done with the transition our school is going through. The construction, dust, noise, etc wears on me but I will try not to explain too much.
I always like to send my kids off with something that will help them keep up their skills, yet is not to “schoolish.” Yes, I made that word up. I kind of like it.
It is summer. Kids should play and be a kid, but why not write down their summer memories of being a kid.
So to help with their memory keeping, I like to give them a summer journal, along with journaling strips. My kids have had journaling strips in their homework all year, but these are geared toward summer.
I buy extra notebooks during the back-to-school sales and save them for summer journals. I print out the journaling strips and provide them with a cute pencil and eraser. They love them! They can choose their prompt, cut it out and then write about it.

I started this last summer. I told the that if they wrote in their journal, bring it back when school resumes and they could pick out something from the prize box. I always have a few students hold me up to that offer, and I love it!
If you are interested in the summer journal strips or the year of journal strips, click below.
[…] For an end of the year gift, I always send home a fun item (beach ball, pencils, etc) and a summer journal. My kids always love these. You can read more about them here. […]