Getting Your Room Ready for Summer Break

Hey y'all!  I have 7 days of school left!  Eeek!  So excited!  I am in full force cleaning mode...and so are my kids.  Yes, they help me clean, organize, & sort everything in the room from, games, books, manipulatives....you name it, we clean it!  So, that's what we've been doing a lot of this week already.  Plus, this is the perfect time of year to get some extra sunshine (wink, wink).  Some fun things I've planned for this week are bubbles, sidewalk chalk, stuffed friend picnic, popcorn and a movie, AND, we have field day Thursday with all kinds of fun planned by our coach.  Check out Cara's cutie patootie ideas HERE.  She has some wonderful things planned for her kiddos!  Here's a few pictures of how my kids help me organize.

A full Lost and Found Tub = Not good.

 To find where all the "extras" go I have my kids play every game and raise their hand when they are done.  I check each piece to make sure they played it correctly...then I jot down on a sticky note which pieces are missing.  Sometimes, we find pieces in other boxes too...not just the lost and found.  So, as we find missing pieces,  I mark out the piece we found.  

 Sorry for the sideways picture...could NOT get it to turn in blogger...

If a game has all the pieces, it gets a smiley sticky.  I like labeling them so even during summer if I find pieces I know where to look.

 Once games get a smiley, they go on a shelf and aren't touched again...until next school year.

 I wish the shelves in my room looked this good all year long....yeah right.  

My kiddos organize each shelf after we check them, to make them look nice and neat.

This is the finished product. 

 While they were playing their games and finding missing pieces, I was unwrapping our new Reading Series materials and organizing those so I won't have to do that this summer.

 Plus, I've already started running copies and die-cutting things for the beginning of next year!!

Makes me happy!

What do you do to get your room ready for summer?

Have you started looking at your August plans yet?