Sophie changed teachers at the beginning of the school year, and so they had a goodbye celebration with all the kids, their families, and the teacher. For about two months before hand the kids had been voting on what they wanted to do as their final activity. Should they go camping somewhere? How about a day at a big water park? Maybe swimming at the local pool and then a sleepover at school?
Frau Göldi explained why some of them weren’t possible either logistically or financially, and then let the kids vote on the activities that were feasible. 
In the end they went swimming at our local pool and then had dinner and a sleepover at the school, complete with a movie and goodnight story. We parents were invited to the dinner part (partly so we would provide it heehee) and it was then that we gave Frau Göldi her big gift. All the parents had contributed money and we bought her a special apple tree for her garden.
Her husband said that that is where she loved to spend most of her free time. That, or riding around the countryside on her motorcycle. Yeah, she’s pretty cool. 🙂
I cut out flower shaped from cardstock and tied them with ribbon. Each child was given one, and they wrote their good wishes and thanks on them, and then she called them up one by one to read out what was written on their and hang it on the tree. Some of the kids, for example Sophie, did not want to read their message out loud, and that was also fine.
It was very interesting to see how much Sophie grew to really like her teacher. When my neighbor found out Sophie was going to have her for first through third grade, she told me all kinds of horror stories about her. She was just awful, never did anything special, agreed to help you out to your face and did none of it, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t pass any of this on to Sophie, just remained positive and upbeat.
Turns out she was the perfect teacher for Sophie. Frau Göldi actually wanted to be an artist, but it’s tough to make a living from that, so she became a teacher and just did art for fun. She used it a lot in her classroom as well. And as Sophie loves art and crafty stuff, she had a ball. They did go on outings, although not tons, but still, enough. And she was very fair. She loved Sophie, too, since Sophie was a hard worker, didn’t need to be told things more than once, and was neat. 🙂
It is always a little sad when the kids move to the next level at school. We have had three years to get used to this teacher, get to really know them, and truly appreciate them. Fortunately, the group of kids she is with stays the same, so it isn’t all new. And with the way my kids were born, we will have the same group of teachers four times! It’s just Sophie that didn’t fit the pattern. She was very excited to see that she will still have Frau Göldi for two hours this year as well. She will be teaching “Werken” or shop class, for two hours every Friday this year just for Sophie’s class. Hooray!