Last Day Before Winter Break! (freebies)

We had a fantastic day on Friday - our last day before our 2 week Winter Break!

I handed out my teammates' gifts: hand sanitizer with a cute saying from my creative husband. Grab the free tags here!

 
In the morning we had an assembly where my class performed my new favorite Christmas song! It's "Santa's Coming" by Bounce Patrol - they are children's entertainers from Melbourne, Australia. They have some AWESOME youtube videos for shapes and letters that you should check out!

We also had an Ugly Sweater contest for the teachers. Here was mine:

 We all tied for 1st place based on the applause from students :)

Next some of us got together to perform "I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas" as it has Oklahoma roots! I got "voluntold" to be the hippo, but I think I rocked it :)

Once we got to the classroom, we kept the holiday atmosphere going with Holiday Goldfish sorting & patterning during Math:

We sorted first, then each student had to create an AB and AABB pattern before getting the green light to start eating! Grab the sorting sheet here.

 This little cutie decided to build her pattern all around the paper!

At the end of the day we had our party. I had asked parents to send in sugar cookies, icing, sprinkles and small candies. First we created our Christmas trees using sugar cones (oh wow, is that a 3d shape we're getting hands on practice with?!)

Each child got their own container with frosting, their own M&Ms and a spoon to use for licking spreading.

 Big thanks to Maria at Kinder Craze for the inspiration!

Next we decorated our sugar cookies! I allowed my kiddos to explore the materials as much as they wanted:

This little guy loved the sprinkles - and using a whole container on two cookies might be a bit extreme at home, but during a holiday party it's perfectly fine!

 

This "Grinch" cookie was simultaneously sweet & scary!

The funniest part was that most of the children refused to eat their creations - the decorating was all they were interested in and after licking their fingers they were perfectly content to forgo actually eating their sugar-laden creations. Luckily I had some ziploc baggies so I could send all that sugar home to be consumed during our break! (muhahaha!) 

Now I'm home, getting ready for the holidays with my own 5 children - and planning for all the fun we'll have in January at school - I love penguins!!