That Time of Year

How is it that I always forget what happens at this time of year?  22 sweet kids stuck in a small room together.  All awesome kids.  All getting pretty tired of each other.

It happens every year.  They've been together all year and are starting to get annoyed with each other.  Little comments here and there, an eye roll, or mean look.  The bickering and general lack of patience with each other.

All little things but they're starting to tear our team down.

We had "the talk" Friday.  We talked about how when we put out negative feelings, it takes a whole lot of positive to get that fixed up.  We decided a whole lot of positive needed to be added to our room.

Friday afternoon, they had to choose three people (and not their besties!) and decided on a positive act-words or small kindness-they could perform that would add positiveness to our room.  On Monday afternoon, we shutting down the school work early and starting some team building activities.

We're reading The Energy Bus for Kids.
There's an adult version.  Basically, in life, you have to choose to get on the positive energy bus or be an energy vampire.

There are even posters on book's the website.  Raise your hand if you know an energy vampire.

We're going to plan out words we would want our principal to use when describing us.  Then, we're going to plan actions that will get us there.

We're going to decorate our names on posters.  There will be traveling to write positive comments on other people's name posters.

They're going to work in small groups to create skits on how to and how NOT to respond to energy vampires.

That's my game plan.  How do you manage this time of year?  Any suggestions for me?