Classroom December Decor, Our Elf, & Upcoming Week

   This post will be a whole bunch of randomness! We have had a GREAT week despite the arctic cold that hit our state. We started the week in the 60's on Monday and then dropped to the single digits and below zero the rest of the week. Thank goodness our classroom elf, Manning, has warmed our classroom spirit up! You can read about Manning's arrival and my Elf on the Shelf unit here. After reading about his special mission it was time for my kiddos to find him each morning to draw and write about him in their journals.

 Monday: Manning arrives in style!

 Tuesday: Forget elf, mountain climber perhaps?

 Wednesday: Least someone got to sleep in on this c.....o.....l....d morning. 

 Thursday: Oh no! Where is our class pet Happy Feet?

 Manning has decided to become mischievous and piggyback ride our class pet! 

 Friday: Payback perhaps for yesterdays mischief? 

Here is a peek at part of Manning's plan for Monday. More to come later in the week!

   Last weekend I posted some pictures of my home for the holidays and this weekend I wanted to post some pictures of my home away from home...the classroom.

 Here is our writing center. I have a bunch of gingerbread materials out to support our Compare & Contrast unit we completed last week. (You can read about that here.) There are stickers, stamps, finger puppets, fancy paper, stencils, stuffed writing buddies, and picture prompt cards from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer movie. 

 Here is a look at our much loved Christmas Writing Tree. I have a bunch of arctic animals placed on the tree that the kiddos can take off and write about. This is a picture from later in the week when their "clean-up decorating" is not so pretty. 

 I changed the circle colors above my student work tree trunks out in the hall to whites, blues, and grays to represent snow. These are now covered with our gingerbread proper noun flip books. 

 This is our classroom door. The kiddos love the bells on our door ringing every time they go in and out. 

 One my my teammates door. I made asked if they could put bells on their doors too!

My other teammates door. She has bells on her door knob too! Hehe!

   Our kiddos have been having so much fun the past week with our Christmas Around the World unit. (You can read about it here.) I just love the setup we have this year being able to travel to all of the countries. This week I have the pleasure to take my kiddos to Russia and England. For Russia we will be making folding nesting dolls and for England we will be making these Christmas Poppers.

   My kiddos have been collecting toilet paper rolls for this activity for weeks not knowing what we will be using them for. We will decorate the outside of tissue paper with markers, fill the inside of the rolls with candy and little toys (those are already in my classroom),then rolling up our decorated paper and twisting the ends. Once our travels are over the kiddos get to pull both ends of the paper to make the tube "pop" and release all of their goodies.
   We are finally taking a break from addition with regrouping in math to measurement. Here is a look at the anchor chart we will use on our math focus wall to help use identify various measuring tools.

   On Tuesday we will be making our own "rulers" and measuring various sized candy bars and gummy worms. (Thank god I am not a very big candy lover because I have a lot of candy in my bag right now!) We will then be discussing and completing activities with inches, centimeters, and feet. We will finish the week by making a life sized gingerbread house with specific measurements within a group.
   I just checked the temperature for tomorrow and it is going to get up to 21 degrees! YIPPEE! A heat wave is right around the corner folks! Have a great upcoming week.