Christmas Wrap Up

Talk about blogging withdraw.  I have been without a computer at home for about a week, which may or may not have involved a 1 year old and a glass of water.  All is fine now, so this post may be a little random because I have been making lists of things to include 🙂
First, I wanted to share a New Year’s activity.  First, we read the book, Squirrel’s New Years Resolution.

After discussing New Year’s resolutions, we created a list of some of our own.  Each student wrote their own resolution.


Then I passed out the numbers 2012, students glued them onto their papers and decorated them with crayons, glitter, and sequins.
This week, we also made our parent gifts.  For the past couple of years, I had been making handprint calendars.  Every year, I told myself, “I am not doing these next year” because they are so time consuming and then when students move away or move in, it was a nightmare trying to catch everyone up.  This year, I finally chose a different project. 
I’m sure you have seen these ornaments before.
They turned out SO cute and they were SO easy compared to the calendars.  Here are some recommendations for making these.  Use acrylic paint.  I was the idiot that used tempera paint.  After painting 21 little hands, I let the ornaments dry only to come back and see all of the paint had flaked off.
Tip number 2, if you can find blue plastic ornaments, do this with these instead of glass.  The glass ones are shiny and pretty, but so fragile.  One of the students broke hers before she made it out of the building. 
I had the students decorate paper bags to place these in.
Sorry.  The picture is sideways.
I really wanted to make these cute gift bags that I found on Pinterest, but we just ran out of time.
I also found this idea from Mrs. Lee’s Kindergarten.
I decided to have my students measure their own strips since we just began working with rulers and inches.  I gave each student five 12 inch strips.  They had to measure a 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 inch strip for their tree.
Then they decorated the trees.
The last thing I wanted to share is another Pinterest idea.
This idea was originally created as a gift to give a neighbor, but I loved this idea to give my grade level companions.  I just attached a gift tag that said, “Ho! Ho! Ho! From the Ding Dong next door!  Merry Christmas!”
So, now it’s officially Christmas Break and I have 2 weeks off.  I am very excited to spend tons of time with my family and relax.

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10 Comments

  1. OOOOOOhhhhh! We are going the first two days of next week- love the New Year's Resolution- and I am going to Books A Million tomorrow to see if they have the book!!!!

    Your ornaments turned out great!
    And my neighbors will be getting ho-hos and ding dongs this year!!!!!

    Going Nutty!

    Staci

  2. I just got that book from Scholastic and will be using it in a similar way! You know what they say. . .great minds and all. . . And I really love the tree. It's still not too late for me to use that idea in my class because we go up to and including a full day of Dec. 23!! Thanks a bunch and Merry Christmas!
    Dee
    First Impressions

  3. I love the snowman ornaments. We have made those for several years, but didn't this year (too overwhelmed with graduate school to go buy the ornaments–pitiful, right??!)! One thing I always did was put a small squirt of liquid soap in the paint to help it wash off the kiddos easily.

    I'm going to have to get that New Years book. Too cute! Thanks for sharing!

    Live Laugh and Love to Learn

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