Doing a little catching up

Before our Christmas break, my class and I were quite busy!  Here are a few of the ways we got ready for Christmas!

First, we had our Polar Express Day.  We had cookies and hot chocolate (let me tell you, it was awesome!), and the kids wore their pajamas and laid on the carpet under their towels and blankets.  Of course, I had one kiddo spill on my brand new carpet, which I was pretty sad about.  I need to bring in my enzymatic carpet cleaner to clean up the mess!

Don't they look adorable in their pjs?

(For the record, the little girl on the left is actually wearing pants.  She just got warm and rolled the legs up!  I wish I had asked her to roll them down before I took this picture!  Maybe I'll just have to crop it a little bit...)

We had a special delivery in the middle of the movie!  We got a package from the North Pole that came from Santa Claus himself!  It was even cold!  Our school secretary brought it down to the room and told the kids it just "appeared" on her desk and she thought it might be important.  Inside was a bell for each one of my students.  It was super cute.  Of course, the string for each bell got tangled so I spent the last part of the movie untangling each one of the stupid things.  Next year, I'm going to have to figure something else out.  But the kids were excited, and that's all that matters!

Earlier that day, we went to see the Nutcracker Ballet!  The kids loved it!  They even kept the curtain open during intermisson so they could watch the set change.  One of my kids was sitting next to me and got really excited because they knew some of the songs!  So cute!

We made 2 gifts for our parents.  These are salt dough Christmas trees.  We made the dough, then cut out the trees and I took them home to cook in the oven.  They painted them one day, and we decorated the next using q-tips and acrylic paint.  Last year, I made the mistake of using tempera paint on these, and the paint cracked and looked awful!  So I made a special trip to the craft store and bought way more green paint than necessary.  I had the rest of the colors in my craft stash at home, so now I just have a whole lot of green paint to add to it!  I am so glad we used the q-tips, because they turned out really cute!  At least, most of them did!

We also made Reagan Tunstall's cute little snowmen from socks.  They turned out so cute.  I used socks I already had, and they had grey on the bottom, though.  So we glued the bottom part together so you couldn't see the grey.  They looked better, but they were harder to stand up.

Here are all  our cute little snowmen!

This one was my favorite.  Somehow he managed to have a really tall torso compared to the rest of them.  He was so cute.

We also did some of the activities from my Fun with the Gingerbread Man Math and Literacy Activities packet.  These are the gingerbread pirates from the Gingerbread pirate glyph!  They turned out so cute!  

Our class got a visit from one very important man and woman:  Santa and Mrs. Claus!  There were also a few elves that visited us as well!  One of my school's partners, Zeon, comes each year with Santa and Mrs. Claus and some helpers.  They visit each class in the school and bring the kids goody bags.  The kids love being visited by Santa!  

 

The kids really enjoyed their goody bags!  They each get a stuffed animal, usually a few healthy snacks, an activity pad, and I believe they got a toothbrush this year!  I think it's so nice that there are people in my community who do such nice things for our students!

My kiddos, Santa, Mrs. Claus, an elf, and you can see a bunch of Santa's "helpers" in the back.  I'm the short one in the red shirt, and our Environmental Ed coordinator is the one in the black sweater.  She's the person who puts all this together!

Of course, I had a little bit of fun with my sock monkey.  Max comes to visit the classroom from time to time and likes to dress up.  I borrowed an elf costume meant for a kindergartener from our librarian and dressed Max in it.  I even managed to find a mini Max that matches my big Max.  So I put them in this big bag that looks like Santa and left him there for the kids to find.

One of my students asked me why he was in a stocking, but I told them I had no idea why.  So she reached inside and pulled out the mini Max.  Then the kids told me I was a step mom to the mini Max!  I was cracking up.  Apparently I'm now a parent.  LOL.  

This is how one of my students fixed Max and mini Max to sit.  Cute.  I found a small elf hat for the mini Max, but I can't get my phone to cooperate to upload a picture.  Maybe I will later.

If you've followed along with me this long, thanks!  :-)  I realize this post was quite long!

We go back to school tomorrow, and I am so not looking forward to getting up early tomorrow.  I just want to sleep in for one more day!  I've been totally off my sleep schedule for the past week, and I know I'm going to pay for it tomorrow.

Have a great week!