Why Have A Classroom Elf?

How to Make a Classroom Elf Educational! 

There's been some controversy about having an Elf in the classroom. There's some question as to whether its beneficial in an educational setting. I decided to post about what our elf did in the days prior to our winter break - check it out:

In order to get an Elf in our classroom we had to write Santa and persuade him to send us one:

Santa sent him the next day - wrapped up in an icy cold box. The children immediately deduced that the box had to be from Santa because it's cold at the North Pole (and our Oklahoma weather was warm at the time)!

 

He picked some fun hiding places around the room - and the kids were always so excited to find him each morning - it really set the tone for the rest of the day to start with that enthusiasm!

You can see that he chose to hide by the letter "I" - coincidentally, that is a letter many of my students didn't know when I assessed them. By the end of the day, that statistic had changed :) 

The day that he chose to hang out on our Reading Center canopy, the number of children who chose that center skyrocketed, and they came back all week, even once he had moved to another place! The children explored so many of our books and had great conversations comparing books, "reading" them to each other and having my assistant read to them!

His hiding place on our Smartboard speaker wasn't as inspired - he slipped down behind the board twice! The kids were convinced of his magic when he managed to get himself back up while we were out to recess though!

He always left a note, sometimes in his hiding place like when he was on the rocket, sometimes just under a table or on a chair. Finding the letter was part of the fun! And his letters always mentioned classroom behavior - positives & negatives (without naming names!) and encouraged kindness and following procedures.

He also always sent a present:

The kids loved this notepad and special pen! They practiced writing their numbers, letters and names in their spare time all week!

These "magic spheres" helped reinforce that 3d shape term, and encouraged sensory exploration! Note that putting a lid on the box was not a good idea - they soon turn moldy without the air circulating!

 

The kids loved this "Gift of the North Pole" and used their inferring skills to figure out that the white powder must somehow turn to snow! Although it was too squishy to create much with, they enjoyed scooping it into our buckets and making small towers!

He also brought us 2 floor puzzles - Llama Llama, and Pete the Cat! Coincidentally, my kiddos were ready to move on to puzzles with more pieces and these are 2 of our favorite book characters....
 

He also left us red and green crystal growing kits! Following the directions, measuring the amount of water and observing the results was all great fun (and hit some key concepts!)

I'm so happy Chippy came to visit us - and that we were able to incorporate so much learning into his stay! I've also created a set of 24 notes for an Elf to bring to the classroom! This pack comes with a writing paper with lines and space to draw, and the Elf Request letter pictured at the top of this post. You can grab Letters From An Elf in my TPT store!

 

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!!

Classroom Elf & Gingerbread!

This week we've had a lot of fun with our Classroom Elf! 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!