One activity that we do in our kindergarten is to make a welcome poster for next year's class. We make a sign that says "The kindergarten class of 2011 welcomes the Kindergarten Class of 2012!" Then each child makes a flower with a paper stem and paper leaves. Each child writes his/her name on a leaf and glues to the bulletin board paper. Each child's hand is painted and added as a flower on the stem. This year I asked each child to make a head of themselves as the flower center. We ask the children to create one detail for the poster. There are 3 kindergarten teachers in our school and even though we did the same activity, we all came up with something different! Lisa had her kids write their names on a seed that was glued under the flower. This was really cute symbolism - the seeds of kindergarten were planted and grew into beautiful flowers! And look at Lea's sun - her students were so excited to show me that their sun had braces!
We did our posters during literacy center time. Instead of having a guided reading group, we brought each reading group over to the table and had them create their flower. This made it so much more manageable because we were only working with 4-5 children at a time.
We save this poster over the summer and then put it up as a welcome for the first day of school in August. Of course, it is not as meaningful to the new kindergarten as it is to our present kiddos, but those new first graders really enjoy coming back and seeing their work! BTW: This poster rolls up really well, so it stores nicely over the summer!
We still haven't planted our "real" garden! Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we will get out there tomorrow!