Snow Day!

So. My morning went a little like this... Woke up, roads were bad-ish, but had no call from the school. Went to school. Walked in the door, principal said "hey, don't you know we have a 2-hour delay?" Then my phone rang. I was there, so I got some work done. Then they cancelled school. BLAH.

BUT. The best part? High school and middle school had already gotten to school by the time ours was cancelled, so they put in a whole day even though we didn't go at all, which means we don't have to make the day up!! Woot! So, I went home, played in the snow with my pup, and finished up me 3 hours of video training on how to recognize and report child abuse. We even had to take a quiz. I passed. Hooray?

Anywho, here's some of what we've been up to in first grade the past few days... I finished my Christmas door, which if you remember from last year, we all tend to go a little over the top. Well, this year we're not going QUITE as over the top, since there's literally like 2 days of school in December. Hard to be motivated to put up door decorations that will be ripped down the next week. I know, I'm a Scrooge. We had to pick songs, so I went with "We Are Santa's Elves" from Rudolph, and turned my door into Santa's workshop.

It looked REALLY lame and boring, so I added a nice list with all my kiddos' names, and a Christmas countdown. Super low key, but it's still fun. I'll try to take some pictures of other doors in the building this week!

If you follow me on instagram (@mrfirstgrade) you've seen what our elf, Mistletoe has been up to! Here's what he's done the past few days...

Hope you're enjoying December with your kiddos!

Christmas Door Contest

Our school hosted a Christmas door decorating contest... Let me first start by saying that we are just a little extremely competitive. We hear contest and break out all the bells and whistles. This contest was no exception. Please enjoy this explosion of holiday ideas! I cannot take credit for any of them, but wanted the world to catch a glimpse of the creativity of our teachers!

Here's the gingerbread house right next to my room. The kids had their faces on gingerbread men and the principal was the big gingerbread man on the door - she even made a roof out of an old refrigerator box to hang from the ceiling. I know. Over. The. Top!

Library door, complete with singing reindeer and an original Christmas song!  "Hope your holidays are merry... Fa la la la la la la la la... With some books from the library... Fa la la la la la la la la..."

"I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas"

Charlie Brown Christmas, complete with vintage Christmas lights!

Our reading center was turned into a Reindeer stable and the reading specialist had the kids make each of the teachers as a reindeer... Priceless!

Polar Express - the students were all in their bathrobes and the teacher even put their pictures on tickets. They also do a big Polar Express day, so this will make it even cooler!

The Grinch's cave - showing him how he can care... LOVE!

A collection of snow globes.

The Island of Misfit Teachers - each of the teachers had their face plastered onto a character from Rudolph... I was Hermie.  My life is complete.

Penguin Party - the teacher made herself an eskimo and all the kids were penguins.

Over-sized Santa... Pretty cool!

Mele Kalikimaka!

Who-ville! Our reading teacher is ob-SEUSSED with Dr. Seuss. She's that bubbly thing sitting at her desk being super productive.

We have, hands down, the most amazing custodial staff. Our daytime custodian decided to decorate his "office" to join in the fun. 

The nurse's office!!

The list goes on and on...

 

 

Do you have any fun holiday door ideas? Please share! We'll all be trying to one-up ourselves next year!

You're a Mean One...

Alas, I have finished my Christmas door decorating. Every time I thought I was done, I just kept adding things! Our school is begininning to look as if Christmas threw up in the halls, and I wouldn't have it any other way!  Check out some of the things we did to make our "Grinchy" door decoration!

As I was painting the Grinch and hanging him up, one of the students in our building said "You need a Max!" I went YES I DO! So I set about the process of finding the perfect picture of my little pup, Charlie... I learned that if you're in a PDF file, you have the ability to blow it up and print is as a poster. So that's just what I did to make a larger-than-life-size picture of my doggie. I added the bone to his head to make the PERFECT Max for our doorway!

I wanted to find a way to include pictures of my kiddos, and thought... what better way than to turn them into Who's! So that's just what we did. I drew 4 different Who bodies for them to choose from, and took their picture with their mouth open so it looked like they were singing. I think the final product is nothing short of hilarious. Check these babies out!

I added the snow and trees as an afterthought, as the Who's appeared to be flying... Oh well! And CHECK out these awesome snowflakes that my little firsts made! I was SO surprised at how well they followed directions and cut through all those folds of paper! Made me smile :-)

Stay tuned... Our door decorating contest officially ends tomorrow, and I plan on taking pictures of all the doors in our building. We sort-of went a little overboard... Go big or go home, eh?

It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas...

Heyo!  I don't know about the rest of you, but when I came back from Thanksgiving break, Christmas was in full swing! We had off school this past Monday for the first day of hunting season, which is AWESOME for people like me who've never shot a gun and would pass out if they had to gut a deer. I took the opportunity to decorate my room so it was all ready to rock and roll when the kids came back on Tuesday. I also spent some time making a set of Christmas themed math and literacy centers, which are now available on my TpT site!

Click to check it out in my TpT store

I was also SUPER excited to get started with my elf on the shelf. Last year, my students decided to name him Mistletoe, which I love love love. On Tuesday, I mentioned to my kiddos that I had an elf visit our room last year, but I was worried that he might not find my room, since I switched schools. I told them that he showed up right after Thanksgiving last year, so we should be on the lookout for him. Totally took the opportunity to talk about things that Mistletoe would be happy to see if he were watching... My favorite response: "We shouldn't pick our noses while he's here." Priceless. (I wrote don't be yucky).

He showed up in our room Wednesday morning, hiding in one of the cups on my amazing word wall. The kids were VERY excited to see him, and some of them even said they saw him blink or turn his head... I love how much they believe! I caught one of my students whispering to him at the end of the day once everyone else had left... Made my heart smile!

The MOST exciting part of the day was when we came back from lunch. They started saying that they saw him move. I, being the slightly overly dramatic person that I am, played along. I was COMPLETELY dumbfounded when I went into the room and saw that he really had moved. One of the teachers in my building, and I'm STILL not sure who, snuck in and moved him while we were at lunch. So here's little old me, JUST as excited as my first graders. He really is magical!  Today I decided to have him start a little mischief. He destroyed our calendar, and the kids thought it was the funniest thing.

If you use an elf in your classroom, what are some fun places that you hide it? I'm ALWAYS looking for silly things for Mistletoe to do!