wrapping up Christmas

It is finally Christmas break!! I am so excited. That last week wore me out. I was determined to get all the fun holiday goodness that I planned completed and I did! Our party was super fun and the kids were well behaved. For our book exchange, so many ways to do it, I decided to play hot book. We all sat in a circle and passed a wrapped book. When the music stopped you got to keep it. The circle got smaller and smaller until everyone had a book. Then they all unwrapped their books. I had my kids bring gently used books so they did not have to spend money.

How to decorate a Christmas tree interactive writing.

We also used this for graphing how many lights, ornaments, stars, and presents were on our tree.

Candy cane graph from Deanna Jump's Christmas math and literacy unit. The kids who liked candy canes painted the red stripes. The kids who did not like candy canes cut out a star and added glitter to it.

This is what the kids made for their parents. Our laminator at school is broken so I didn't get to laminate them. I thought about using my Scotch laminator, but film is too dang expensive to laminate 25 of these things.

This is what I gave to my kiddos for a gift. I provided the label if you want to make elf pillows. My packaging is not very cute- ran out of time.

Enjoy your break off from school!!! My husband is finally home from Anguilla. He gets a little time off then he will start hospital rotations in Chicago. Anyone teach in Chicago? Email me if you do.

Gingerbread Man and Christmas

Well today I had to do it. I pulled the Santa card. "That's it, I'm calling Santa!" Oh you should have seen their faces. I was trying my hardest to control my laughter. I pulled out my iphone and called up Santa with one of my apps. If your kids are getting restless and you need a motivator for good behavior call Santa. We have been having so much fun with our gingerbread theme. We have been working on this fun rhyme Kim Adsit has posted on her website. Great for role play and one less.

We have read lots of versions of the Gingerbread Man. One of my favorites is the Gingerbread Girl. After reading the book we mapped the story.

We worked on story elements and added to our chart after each story. The titles came from Deanna Jump's gingerbread unit.

This graph can also be found in her unit. We graphed which part of the cookie did you bite first.

After eating our gingerbread cookie we used adjectives to describe the gingerbread. They used this to help them write list poems.

We also measured my huge gingerbread cookie with peppermints. We first made predictions about how tall we think gingerbread man is. I recorded the guesses and then we measured. We found out which guess was closest to the actual number by using a number line. Then they compared themselves to the gingerbread cookie. The recording sheet and peppermints came from Mrs. Lee.

I picked up some candy canes from wal-mart tonight while out shopping for Grinch day. This is my graph from last year. Planning to do this tomorrow. You can find this in Deanna Jump's Christmas math and literacy unit.

We made Santa Claus and wrote our Christmas list to Santa.

Then as a class we brainstormed what Santa wants for Christmas. Another idea from Growing kinders.

I pulled out Candy Land {sight word edition} to play in stations.

We practiced retelling a story using this book.