The end of the year can be such a fun time… testing is over and summer is near! Thank heavens! But how to keep your students learning when they’d rather be at the beach? Here are some of my favorite ideas:

Review games. Fun distracts kids from the fact that they’re reviewing! I’ve tried this in a tournament style, where teams compete in a variety of games for a big prize. Try these fun review games!

Field day activities outside. Many teachers don’t have time for lots of physical fitness activities, so use the end of the year to help kids enjoy the outdoors while working on team building and leadership skills. Here’s my post on 21 Dr. Seuss themed ideas and this post about a fun water game I learned.

End of the year awards. Your class can vote anonymously on the awards or you can assign them. Check out my collection of 44 printable awards or my blank star awards.

Book Reports. Each student in my class had the opportunity to share their favorite book from the year. I let kids make come kind of visual project or display, which they seemed to enjoy making and showing their classmates. This is one report template you can give your students if you’re looking for a springboard.

Yearbooks and Year-In-Review projects. I absolutely loved this one. It might be my all time favorite. You can assign each student to write one article, or have each student write each one for themselves. Ask parents to bring in or submit pictures from throughout the year. Students can draw pictures or create artwork to go with the writing. This is also a great review of the parts of a paragraph and the writing process. Here are my two printables for this idea: 10 page printable yearbook or  1 page end of the year round up.

Awesome art projects. All those art projects you’ve been dying to do with your class but you don’t have time? Do them! Here’s a cool mask idea for upper grades.

Click here to view more end of the year ideas I’ve written about!