Elf on The Shelf & Gingerbread!

This week we've had a lot of fun with our Elf on the Shelf! We watched the dvd of An Elf's Story on Monday and wrote letters to Santa asking for an elf for our classroom. Since my littles are just 4 and 5, I gave them a template for their letter to help them out - I think they are fabulous!

This is a picture of ME (on the left) drawing a picture of the elf on our Smartboard! And yes, that's about how my elf looked - I always tell my kids that I'm not the best at drawing, but I still TRY my best lol. 

When our elf arrived on Tuesday - in a freezing cold, gift wrapped box - the kids quickly jumped to the conclusion that the gift MUST be from Santa! I love it when they can make connections like that! We read the story and then voted on a name. We went with what we knew this year and named him Chippy, just like in the movie lol.

Chippy balanced on top of our Smartboard speakers on Wednesday....and got knocked down TWICE when I bumped the board. Luckily he righted himself when we left the room each time, but I told him he had to start choosing safer hangouts!

Chippy doesn't play tricks on us, instead he brings us things for the classroom. On Wednesday he showed up with "magic spheres" that expanded in water - great for getting that 3d shape practice, plus the kids loved exploring them in Science Center so they were a sensory treat as well!

On Thursday he brought us notepaper and a special pen and asked us to write him letters! As kids had time throughout the day they were allowed to get a note and practice writing their name or Chippy's name or any letters around the room. The special pen made it even better and they all took turns to use it :)

On Friday he brought us  Pete the Cat and Llama llama floor puzzles for our puzzle center! He also hung out on top of our Reading Center canopy - much safer!

I'm not sure what he'll be up to on Monday, but you can find great science ideas at Dollar Tree ;)

We also spent the week creating this bulletin board display:

The kids collected the sticks during recess and we talked about graduated order and how the sticks are lomg on the bottom of the tree and get shorter towards the top.  The ornaments were made by patterning holiday scrapbook paper and the snowflakes are handprints!

We're keeping the Gingerbread them going too - we've read several versions of The Gingerbread Boyas well as Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends .

 We tasted Gingerbread too:

Not only had most of my kiddos never tasted a gingerbread cookie, most of them took their cookie's head off in the first bite!

We love matching our ten frames and numeral cards from my Christmas Ten Frames pack - those little gingerbread cookies are too adorable and the kids can't get enough of them!

We're also still working on our Gingerbread Math Readers:

I love introducing the reader in the pocket chart since it helps so much with Print Concepts. Many of my littles come to me with zero knowledge about reading and doing pocket chart stories like these help us nail down print directionality, and one to one correspondence between spoken word and printed word.

This next week we'll be finishing up our Gingerbread Unit, making a TON of handprint crafts and somehow squeeze in a visit from Santa, a class party AND a performance at our final assembly of the year! I can't wait!