What has our Elf been up to lately?

The first thing the children do when they come in each day is look for Trinity, our Elf.  They don't take off their coats, hang up their book bags or even say hello to me (OK, some do, followed by "Where's Trinity?").  It is so much fun.  Let me share some photos with you.

Taking a little nap after a long flight back from the North Pole!

I found Trinity taking a bubble bath in my coffee cup!  The kids thought this was too funny!

This morning Trinity was sporting a new sweater and hat.  She also left us a note!  She is hanging out on the Smart Board watching all the awesome kids!

 

Elves and Gingerbread stories

Our Elf has been so busy this week!  She has been seen ballooning over the library area and hanging out in dramatic play sipping on syrup.  The kids are loving having Trinity visiting from the North Pole.

 

We have been very busy learning about Elves and Gingerbread.  In Reading Workshop we are working on comparing and contrasting the different Gingerbread books.  So far we have read The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Cowboy, The Gingerbread Pirates, The Gingerbread Kid at School.  I have been amazed at what a wonderful job the children are doing finding similarities and differences in the books.  They are noticing sentence structure, patterns, word differences, the different color schemes used by the illustrators and so much more.  We are also using this information to strengthen our research, graphing and data collection skills.  The children voted today on their favorite story so far.  See if you can figure out which one was the favorite so far.

 

 



We have been working on following directions, multi-step directions, letter formation, putting spaces between our words, exploring character traits and writing sentences.  Our Elf project is an activity that requires the students to use all of the above mentioned skills in order to create their own Elf.  The topic is "What would your name be if you were an Elf?"  We are working on this during small group time during afternoon Center Time.  Here are some pictures of the first group working on the project.

The many pieces are laid out and labeled so the children know how many of each piece to collect. 

Next they had to listen to oral directions so they could assemble the elf correctly.

The children worked on fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, sentence construction and receptive/expressive language skills while assembling their elves.

I brought out the glitter glue so the kids could add some festive sparkle to their elves.

Here is mine and the first group's finished elves!

I can tell that I need to pull a strategy group to reteach line spacing for capital and lower case letters.  We are just now starting to use lined paper on some of our writing projects.  This skill will take a lot of practice.  I am proud to see many of the children using capital and lower case letters, putting spaces between their words and thinking about punctuation.  Every month I try to do a project like this with the class to give them a lot of practice listening to and following directions. 

 

Sick Elf

Our poor Elf, Trinity, lost some of her magic last week when she was touched by a human child.  We were so upset that this happened.  Luckily, we had a book about an Elf that got touched by a child and as a class we were able to work together as a team to come up with a plan to try to get her magic back.  When and Elf is touched some of their magic is lost.  This prevents the Elf from flying back and forth to the North Pole each night.  The children all made cards to ask Santa to please take Trinity to the special Elf hospital and to let her get better.  We went to specials and when we came back Trinity was gone!  Her Elf friends must have come and gotten her and taken her back to the North Pole.  Later in the afternoon we got a fax from the North Pole!  It had pictures of Trinity in the Elf hospital!  We were so upset!

 

I am happy to tell you that she was able to return to us after a day in the Elf Hospital.  Everyone learned a great lesson on forgiveness and that sometimes the actions of one person can either cause damage to all or lift up everyone depending on what decisions you make.  This also was a great way for the children to realize that writing has a deep meaning.  When they were writing to Santa they were really thinking about their message, what they wanted their words to convey and how their illustrations can help get your meaning across to the reader.  The children learned a lot academically and emotionally on the Day Trinity Lost Her Magic!

 

Our Elf Has Arrived!

Trinity arrived Monday from the North Pole.  She also brought a small Christmas Tree.  She was hiding in it when I unlocked the door to the classroom this morning.  We read a book The Elf on The Shelf and learned that we cannot touch her!  We loved looking for her. 

On Tuesday morning I came into the classroom and found her in our classroom library hanging out and reading a book!  I didn't know that Elves liked to read so much.  She will fit right in with our great readers!  I cannot wait to see all of the fun places she will hid.  I am so glad Santa sent us our very own elf!