Our December at School: Various Life shots

These pictures are from the two weeks of school preceding Christmas break. They are out of order because some were taken with my cell and some with my camera. 

I hope you find some ideas for next year!

I was inspired by some awesome doors I saw on Pinterest. and created this stuck Santa door for my own classroom door this Christmas. My daughter came in to bring me home that Sunday Afternoon.

During guided reading my groups practised sequencing with my Scrambled Sentences. Look out for some new seasonal ones. They're not made yet, but they ARE coming because I plan on using them ASAP.

For Kwanzaa we created these Unity Cups from Making Learning Fun.

A student handed out these cookies to their teachers the last week before Christmas. Made my day!

These were my students FAVOURITE craft this Christmas, and they were SOOOOO easy. I was inspired by these Dancing Elves from Pinterest, but one of our lovely Kindergarten teachers beat me by a day, so instead of doing the same craft, I improvised and like these better anyway! The pictured Dancing Santa is my daughter as my sample.

We learned about the legend of the Christmas spider as we studied Christmas around the world, and instead of making spiders we made these super sparkly spider webs. We used these for the Ukraine, but they could also be used for Germany.

Santa visited the school on "Santa Day" (the Wednesday before Christmas break), and each student received a small gift (paid for mostly by parents, but EVERY CHILD received a gift regardless of the parents finances)

I baked accidental cookies as part of my Christmas gifts to my students. Long story, but I'll share the recipe.

I have a student with a peanut allergy, so when I discovered that the cake mix cookies I planned on making couldn't be made because the mix we bought "May contain traces of peanuts", I was thrown for a loop. Not to be deterred I planned on Chocolate Chip Cookies. My first discovery was that I had no baking soda, so I replaced the teaspoon of baking soda with a tablespoon of baking powder instead and crossed my fingers. I finally got to the step to add the chocolate and quickly read the no name package. Can you guess what I discovered? Yup, another "May Contain" disclaimer. I didn't want to bake my kiddos what amounted to brown sugar cookies because that didn't feel very festive. So I pulled out my handy dandy food dye and voila! Christmas cookies!

For the Christmas concert every student decorated a paper ornament for the back of the stage. It looked pretty cool to have 200 ornaments up there.

I also gave each student one of these festive straws and a rubber bracelet from the dollar store. the straws didn't survive the afternoon, but were still a hit.

These were the boxes I packed their cookies in.

For Hanukkah we read these dreidel books and made Menorahs (but I forgot to take a picture).

The last Day of November we made these Grinch masks from early moments.

We learned about Saint Nicholas (Siinterklaus) and made these st. Nicks from the saint Nicholas centre.

For Russia we learned about the legend of the Babushka and made these traditional stacking dolls from Activity Village.

For Mexico we made these Poinsettias. Sorry, I can't remember where I got the template, darn it.

Merry Christmas! One of my students took this picture for you.

I hope your Christmas at School this month went awesomely!

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If you would like me to review other books for kids please leave a comment. It must be useful to either teachers or parents of children age 4 to grade 2.

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