Peace, Love, First Grade: December Fun!

Well, I just got back from a MUCH NEEDED vacation in St. Croix! I still have several days of relaxation and then back to work. I really do miss the kids!
Here are just a few pics from our vacation.............

Now for some pics from our fun filled December!

Congratulations are in order for our top 5 AR test takers. These kiddos accomplished between 18-30 points just for the month of November! I'm so proud of each and every one of my students!

We have been getting used to the Ipads and have the the cart checked out for Math and our 90 minute literacy block once a week. They are naturals!

We also had a special guest, Mrs. Santino was our mystery reader! She read the book "Snowflake Bentley" and we loved it! Thank you Mrs. Santino!

Now for tons of pics of our classroom elf. This is how he arrived!

It all started when Mr. Lynne found this package on the roof! He was decorating up there and low and behold this was dropped off above our classroom!

We tried using our inferring skills to figure out what was in our package. They did not want to make this a learning experience whatsoever. Just open the bag Mrs. Dillard!

The suspense................

What???? We got an elf for our classroom? What an epic arrival!

I'm so shocked still....can't you tell? I'm reading them the note directly from the North Pole!

Mrs. Dillard even got something! A naughty and nice student report! I'm so glad I have such a good class and didn't have to send any naughty notes!

The bag that came with our elf was filled with prizes!

Wow! Each student got their very own journal to document and have forever memories.

We had to find a place for our elf to sit while we named him. He had a perfect view of the classroom.

According to the note we had a very important job of giving our classroom elf a name......

We each had our own voting slip and graph to fill out. Our elf had to make sure we were hitting our standards ;o).

Now we have all the names in our special voting bag. We have to narrow it down to three. Our three names that were drawn from the bag were Elfie Jr., Sporty Elf, & Elf.

The name that won was Elfie Jr!!!!

Now it was time to fill our the beginning our our elf journal! They were so excited that they each received this all the way from the North Pole!

To our surprise Elfie Jr. borrowed my push pins and escaped from his arrival balloon! He brought the boys and girls a mailbox, pencils and special notes to write to him. Isn't he thoughtful?

He even left the kids a message and helped himself to my Olaf post its. The students know how much I love my post it's so I was not happy :o)

The next day the students came and in we could not find our Elf. We were very worried so we called Mrs. Hemphill and figured out where he was! He was fishing with her elf in her classroom! Those little stinkers!

Here the boys are looking at a special note "H" got from Elfie Jr. He forgot to leave him a treat the day before so he left him 6 chocolates! Elfie Jr. must have been in a hurry!