I have a tough class this year. The type of class where I swear my blood pressure is rising by the minute. I knew the kids were going to get crazy with the upcoming break and Christmas, so I did something I SWORE I would never do.
I bought an Elf.
On a Shelf.
Yeah.
Well, I bought a cute plush version that didn't cost $30. Yeah, I'm cheap. And the other one is CREEPY. But I was desperate, and truth be told, I like creating Christmas magic. :-)
Our elf came to our classroom the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I hid her up on the top shelf behind my table, in with the Reading Buddies I use to teach reading strategies. None of the students noticed all morning! :-)
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Inside was... a letter. It was from Santa, and it explained that he was giving us an Elf to help watch over our classroom for the next few weeks. The students were so excited- they couldn't believe that they were getting an Elf for our classroom! They finally found her- complete with "The Care of an Elf Manual" that explained how to care for her.
It also came with a suggested list of Elf names that we could name her. I have heard some truly horrible names for the Elves, so I decided to give my students some help in determining a name without making the process open-ended. No Super Dog in my classroom! I felt like the Elf should already have a name (I mean, who lives without a name?!) but I couldn't decide on one! So I let the kids vote. Some of the choices the students had were Jingle, Twinkle, Sparkle, Gumdrop, Snowflake, Peppermint, and Candy Cane. We had a tie, so her name is Twinkle Snowflake.
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I used some glittery washi tape that I found in the dollar bin at Target to seal each letter from Santa. The kids LOVE it!
I have used this Elf as sort of a learning experience for my students as well. I know a lot of other teachers have their Elf do things in their classroom like toilet papering trees and stuff, but I wanted my Elf to be a positive role model. No marshmallow baths in my classroom!
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So Twinkle brought us in a small tree and some plastic ornaments ($3 for the tree, and $1 for the ornaments last Christmas), and hung some snowflakes from the ceiling to decorate! How sweet of her!
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On Friday, the students came in and found that Twinkle was sick! Poor Twinkle! Any time they would get too loud, one of the students or I would remind the kids that she was sleeping! Too funny! They were so concerned about poor sick Twinkle. They loved her medicine. (water and red paint, because I didn't have any glitter!)
I have a few more ideas for next week. Tomorrow (Monday), she is going to bring us some elf games to play! How sweet of her!
There are 4 games in here. I'm going to group my students into 4 groups of 5 and allow them to cycle through these activities- one per day. I did something similar last year, and they LOVED it! It's like going to word work, except every day!
She was also going to bring us little stockings with a candy cane in them, but I CAN'T FIND THEM ANYWHERE! I had them last week, and now I can't find them. I looked through my Christmas stuff like 3 times! :-( So I don't know what she's going to do now! :-(
Do you have an elf in your classroom? What kinds of things does your elf do? Is it naughty or nice? If you have a blog post about your elf, I'd love to read it!