Elf Day!

The week before Christmas vacation is always Spirit Week at our school.  Today was Elf day.  I have an incredibly creative and talented co-teacher so we had such cute elf costumes!  Here we are:

 

We were life-sized Elves on the Shelf!  She made our collars and skirts; she's awesome!  Some of our kiddos didn't have an elf hat of their own, so we made some!  Here is one of my sweeties fast asleep, someone had a long weekend!:

 

Bell, our clasroom elf had also left us a note:

 She was sitting beside our pretty tree:

 

I couldn't resist a selfie:

 

 Tomorrow is Grinch Day!  Can't wait to see what it brings!

 

Our Elf has Arrived!

Last week when we came back from Thanksgiving break, we were surprised by a knock at our classroom door.  I opened the door and there was a mysterious package!  It was soooooooo cold and the Kinders were super excited!

They could not wait for me to open the package when I told them that the return address was: S. Claus North Pole!  So, I tore into it and this is what we found:

We read the story together and then it was time to choose a name for our little elf!

As you can see, Bell won!  We are so happy to have her in the classroom and have begun writing in our Elf journals.  I will post more soon!

Elf on the Shelf Journals Complete!

Just wanted to whip up one quick post tonight to get my mind off of my surgery in the AM.  I finally bound all of my students Elf journals today and sent them home.  Here are a few pictures of the final product:

 Of course, there were many other pages in between, but I didn't want to overload this post!  I also put their letters to Santa in here so they could keep them.  Well, I need to wrap this up.  Have to be up early tomorrow!  Hoping to be out of surgery and home by mid-afternoon tomorrow.

Good-Bye, Rosabelle!

Yesterday we bid farewell to Rosabelle.  I forgot to take a picture of her; oooooops!  She came with a note from Santa Claus.  It said that he received the letters they had written him and hoped that they would continue to be on their best behavior.  Here is what Rosabelle had been up to this past week.  She decided to join us on Rudolph Day by dressing the part:

Here she is on pajama day.  She wore her nightgown, brought her teddy bear and snuggled up with our resident reindeer:

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday and a restful, relaxing vacation!

 

Oh, Rosabelle!

Rosabelle decided to get in on the Grinch Day action yesterday:

 

The students really loved it!

Rosabelle's Shenanigans!

Here is what Rosabelle has been up to the last two days:

 

Yes, Rosabelle decided to sleep on the job the other day.  The Kinders thought it was funny and it was a great way to practice using our exclamation points!

She also wanted a bird's eye view of the room the other day, so, she sat by the calendar:

 

Dear Santa,

Today we practiced our writing skills  by writing a short and sweet letter to Santa.  The students were given a template to write on and my volunteer created a larger version on the whiteboard.  She spearheaded this lesson and I got to walk around and help the Kinders who needed some extra support.

Their first instruction was to write their name on the bottom line and to color the edges green and red.

Once this was done, the writing process began.  This is how it unfolded:

And, here is a finished product:

The Kinders were pretty creative.  Their wishes varied greatly and there weren't any copycats!  Tomorrow we will work on addressing our envelopes to the North Pole.

Elf Journals Cont.

Yesterday we found Rosabelle on our cabinet with a note from Santa.  Here are two writing examples from yesterday:

The students copied the sentence from the whiteboard and had to draw their own picture.  The first example is from one of my regular ed students.  She has super handwriting and she is very detail oriented!  The second example is from one of my ASD kiddos.  He is a repeater and has worked so very hard last year as well as this year and he is doing so well!

The day before yesterday, Rosabelle was on the shelf.  How appropriate!  She was sitting beneath the palm tree and next to the luau pig!  The examples here are from the same students shown above:

Again, the students had to copy the sentence from the whiteboard and draw their own picture.  The students are doing really well creating these sentences together as well as copying them from the board.  They are putting their sight word knowledge to good use!

Here is what Rosabelle was up to today:

She made a mess of our name card on the chart and she added her own name!  I'll post some student writing examples tomorrow!  Rosabelle might be staying in the North Pole tonight as the kiddos were a little out of hand today. 

Rosabelle is keeping us on our toes!

Rosabelle has been keeping the Kinders on their toes!  She brought a note from Santa with her today.  It gave specifics of those who had done something naughty and a few had had done something nice.  Santa also reminded them to be on their best behavior at all times!

Yesterday she was the eye in the sky!  We also wrote the first page of our journal.  We took some suggestions on what Rosabelle likes to eat.  The answers were cute!

Here are a few samples:

Can't wait to see what Rosabelle has in store for tomorrow!

Our Elf Has Arrived!

I waited until today to introduce the Elf on the Shelf to the class.  One of the main reasons I waited was because I knew our volunteer would be coming in today.  I just knew that she would enjoy watching the Kinder's reactions!  I had decided that it would be a good idea to set the package up somewhere while they were at lunch.  So, our volunteer, our para and I put our heads together and decided to put the package in the basket on one of the tables.

  I then grabbed the gold glitter and marked a trail from the basket to the back door of the classroom.  When the students came back to the room for rest, we waited to see what they would do.  There were only three students at the yellow table today and they all noticed the box, but none of them said anything.  One of the Kinders started to push the glitter away from him so we started to ask him what was wrong.  They finally said there was something on the table and it was "sparkly".  We asked if they had done any arts and crafts today with glitter and they said no.  We asked if there was anything different about the table and they finally said, "There's a box in our basket."  Too cute!

  I went over to the table and picked up the box.  Our volunteer asked what it said, so, I read it out loud.  When they heard that it had come from the North Pole they were VERY excited! I asked them what "fragile" meant.  One of my Kinders said "It means it can break."  Awesome!  I them told them that it said "Open Immediately" so they all started to yell, "Open it!  Open it!"   I invited them all to the rug so we could open the package. 

Here I am peeking before showing the kiddos:

The anticipation was building and then I finally showed them!  They were so excited!

I explained that we should read the book so we can find out all about this little elf!

After reading the book I told them that we needed to give her a name, so they had to put their thinking caps on.  I also kept having them repeat the one golden rule!  "Do not touch the elf!".  I handed the chair over to our volunteer who then started the name game!

Some interesting choices there!  We then tallied the votes which lead us to a tie:

 

So, we voted again on the top two names!  Here is the results:

Mrs. Sommer's class would like to introduce Rosabelle the Elf!  I put her in her hiding spot already for tomorrow:

 She took down the fall decor and hung some snowflakes.  Can't wait to see the Kinder's reactions tomorrow!