Holly Blogger Exchange + More!

First up, a nod to Relfy, who hopefully made it back home to the North Pole safely. On his 2nd to last day he left us a message of love which the kids were quite excited about:

 
However, I'm not quite sure his elf magic was up to the task of flying with all the extra weight he put on after sneaking into all of our party goodies:

My students absolutely loved looking for Relfy each day. He got many notes written to him, and stories written about him. I am definitely going to keep this tradition going next year too!

Next up - the Genre Parade went off with only a few hitches. It was an incredibly noisy display, and although we got some nice press coverage, I'm not convinced that it was a great use of instructional time (the science fiction genre is definitely not in my CCSS), but the kids had fun and the intermediate teachers were very enthusiastic about it, so I guess its all good :) Here are a few pictures:

We had 4 posters, then the remaining kiddos either had antennas made from headbands, chenille stems and pompoms or spaceships on strings -two paper plates glued to on top of each other with a piece of yarn hot glued to the middle. We also had face paint - some kiddos just had black cheeks with silver sparkles to signify a starry sky, and others had stars or planets.

Here's what the parade looked like when other classes were coming down the hall:

 My son's class did poetry and had these cute Santa hats and wrote two poems that they carried down the hallway:

Our last day of school was lots of fun, in the morning we had a visit with Santa, then we mixed up a batch of slat dough and made ornaments - we popped them in the cafeteria's oven for 2 hours and they were ready to be painted right before our Christmas party! The Christmas party consisted of cupcakes, juice boxes, chips and 2 pieces of candy each. I used to go all out and get pizza and ask parents to send stuff, but then I inevitably got either the entire family of 6 adults that came to "help" but ended up scarfing down all the pizza, or so many bags of chips and cookies or bottles of sugary drinks that there was no way we could eat it all and the kids went into a sugar-fueled daze that left me wiped out and the classroom a train wreck. Now we just have a nice snack, I play a Christmas movie on the Smart board and everyone has a good time just hanging out. For those that finish early there are even coloring sheets!

Finally, up, I'm a day late posting about my Holly Blogger gift exchange! Here's what I sent (after much agonizing) to Rikki of The Hive:

My gift to Rikki was a set of my favorite Bath & Body Works holiday fragrances: Vanilla Bean Noel, some fuzzy socks because they are so comfy, some festive smelly markers and a little pack of chocolates.

Rikki's gift to me was:

The exact same BBW fragrance lotion! How funny is that?! And I was worried she might not like it lol! She also sent an infinity scarf - which caused much hilarity in my household Christmas morning as my husband and children tried to figure out how it was supposed to be worn. I had to google it to figure it out (I know, I'm so behind the times!),  but now I love it, so versatile! And finally, she sent Some Dude's Fry Sauce which is apparently a Utah favorite and which caused me to have to break out the fryer at 11am Christmas morning so we could all sample it! Everyone liked it, and my husband can't wait to try it on hamburgers too - yummy!

 Thank you Rikki! You made the Exchange way fun this year! Please go over and check out Rikki's blog too and give her some love!

Oh! One more thing! I totally forgot to choose a winner for my Kohl's giftcard giveaway! Due to recent sad events, the giveaway just slipped my mind. So, drumroll please, the winner is:

Irene Leeby of  Learning with Mrs Leeby! Congrats Irene! I'll be emailing you shortly to get your giftcard to you!