Five for Friday-Christmastime!

It's the most wonderful time of the year! I am so excited to be joining up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and posting my Five for Friday :)

Elf on the Shelf

We've been enjoying some elf on the shelf shenanegans!

We needed some new supplies. 

The kids got a kick out of this one! 

Elfies

We updated our instagram board and gave it a Christmas twist!

How adorable are these? Am I right?

Elf Craftivity

I picked up the freebie on TPT. It was a wonderful writing activity that my students thoroughly enjoyed. It didn't include a face or arms, and my students were eager to add more expression to their projects, so I allowed them to cut their heads out of colored construction paper and add them to it. I think they turned out pretty cute. This little guy is my favorite- Look a those eyes and the front teeth! Seriously adorable!

Christmas Advent Devotional

This book is so beautifully written. We have been reading it each day during Bible and coloring an ornament to glue on our trees. 

The words and story are incredibly moving. 

I love how it allows us to take a quiet pause and reflect on the joy and reverence of the season. 

Door Decorating Extravaganza

My class and the 4th/5th grade class decided to get into the holiday spirit and make our hall extra festive. I absolutely love how our doors turned out. 

Well that's all for now folks. Stay tuned next week, I'll be sharing all about our Christmas heritage projects and reports.

December Currently and a FREEBIE!

It's that time again! I'm linking up with Farley over at Oh Boy 4th Grade for the December Currently.

Here's what's going on currently in my world:

~Listening to~
Disney's animated A Christmas Carol I've got a confession for ya: I actually love watching kids movies! When I'm home alone, I usually browse by Fox Family to see if there is anything worth watching, and for the months of October and December I am one happy camper since they show 31 Halloween movies and now they are celebrating 25 days until Christmas with Christmas movies GALORE! I'm in heaven.  I also love A Christmas Carol (animated version) because I know two people who actually worked on that movie! Two of my co-workers have husbands who work in the movie industry. It's cool to know the person behind all of those special effects- I think it makes the movie more interesting :)
~Loving~
Dressember
Recently I learned about this amazing movement. The challenge is to wear a dress for all 31 days in December to raise awareness and funding to help fight human trafficking and violence against women.  I feel like it is something little that I can do during the holiday season to try and make a difference and be a voice for the voiceless victims. 
Here's how my challenge is going so far:

< Day 1     Day 2>

< Day 3    


                       Day 4>

If you are interested in learning more about the Dressember movement feel free to read about it HERE

And if you want to join the movement or do something incredible this December feel free to check out my page HERE

~Thinking~

All about Elf on the Shelf!

Our elf has been up to some funny things this week. I'm trying to brainstorm some fun things to surprise my kids with for the next 2 weeks. 

~Wanting~

To pig out on Christmas cookies. I got invited to a holiday cookie party tonight. I'm required to bring 72 cookies to exchange at the party.

Let me just say- it's taking ALL the self control I have to not eat my cookies before bringing them to the party! AHHH! So tempting!

It's a fun tradition that started 4 years ago. 

I love the idea of bringing 6 dozen cookies to the party and exchanging what I baked with everyone for a dozen of each of their cookies.

That way all of my holiday baking gets done in one night- and I don't have to mess up my kitchen! HA!

I'm looking forward to sampling all the tasty holiday treats tonight!

Oh and in case you're wondering what I decided to make:

Lemon Squares

If you are interested in making them here's the recipe:

Lemon Squares

Ingredients:

1 C butter (2 sticks)

2 C flour

1/2 C powdered sugar

4 eggs

7 TB. lemon juice

2 C white sugar

1/4 C flour

1 tsp. baking powder

Icing:

2 C powdered sugar

3 TB butter

3 TB lemon juice

Directions:

Mix the first 3 ingredients to a cornmeal consistency and pat into a 9"x13" pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 min. Put the next 5 ingredients in a blender. Blend well.

Pour over warm crust and bake for 25 min. 

When crust cools, glaze with Icing.

To make icing, blend powdered sugar, butter and lemon juice. Spread on cake and let cool. Cut into small squares.

Enjoy! :)

~Needing~

To seriously finish up some TPT units I've been working on for awhile now! It may not happen until Christmas break when I've got a good chunk of time and some serious caffeine in my hands! :)

~Giving~

And lastly, I'll be giving away a little FREEBIE!!

This year for Christmas our elementary students will be performing for their families. Each class was responsible to prepare and present something and I thought it would be fun to teach my students a poem.

Since I could not, for the life of me, find a Christmas poem to teach them, I decided to just go ahead and make one.

It's not a masterpiece by any means, but if you're in a pinch and need something cute for your kiddos to share- it'll do just fine.

Feel free to download yourself  a FREE copy. Just click on the link below:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Christmas-Poem-1596845

And to help you all get in the holiday spirit I thought I'd leave you with a little something fun!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Christmas Craziness and Elf on the Shelf

So I must apologize for how long it has been since I last posted. As you can imagine, the Christmas season is always incredibly busy, but this year (for some reason) felt like it snuck up and flew by before I had time to catch my breath!

Although it was really busy, I did manage to take some pictures of our classroom adventures with Elf on the Shelf.  I saw so many cute ideas on interest last year that I really wanted to try but I didn't have enough time to get everything together until this year.

So without further ado….Here are our classroom adventures with Buddy the elf:

 This is how he introduced himself. When the kiddos came into the classroom they were very excited to meet him!

I picked up the cutest Elf on the Shelf unit on TPT thanks to Jaimie Knudson, and do you wanna hear the best news, its completely FREE!! That's right, not a penny and you can download a whole unit that has a great intro letter and cute (daily) letters from the elf. She even included a list of ideas of what your elf can do. I loved that everything was so neat and organized and that it was formatted to fit the classroom setting.

You can find it HERE 

Here are some of the ways our Elf entertained us!

 Sleeping in the tissue box...

 Making snow angels with flour on one of our class tables...

 "Fishing" for  goldfish in our sink...

 Drinking his favorite drink- syrup- You know how elves love their sweets :)

 Reading to our tattling turtle

 We were in desperate need of erasers and pencils (they get a little sparse by the end of the year)

And for our grand finale, our elf brought us mini pancakes to celebrate our 70th day of school as well as our class Christmas party. I told the kiddos that our elf teamed up with Zero the Hero (more on him later) and together they made pancakes for us. 

Overall we had an amazing visit with Buddy and it helped build our anticipation for Christmas to arrive. I will definitely be doing this again next year! :)