On to a little school... I've never had an Elf in my classroom. Usually by the time December rolls around, I'm done. Out of gas. Tired. Just done. This year, this class has my heart. I just adore them. I wanted to do something a little *magical* to make Christmas in our classroom special. So... I splurged and bought an elf. And movie. And lots of treats for the elf to bring. And holy moly... it was expensive! But... I just keep telling myself I love this class and I won't have to buy any of these things again. So I now present...
So.. way back on the Monday after Thanksgiving break, we got a very special delivery in my classroom!
I don't have pictures of the actual delivery. Our ESL / Bilingual Paraprofessional was kind enough to make the delivery. I put the box in the freezer before school so by 1:15 it was nice and COLD!! The kids started guessing what was inside. I hadn't planned on that, but it was fun to see what they thought.. and NONE of them guessed an elf. This is what we saw when we opened the box:
A closer look at the letter...
And then we saw this...
And so it began! A magical adventure in room D106! Thank goodness for Pinterest and Instagram because well I'm just not that creative. That Monday afternoon we only had time to read the book, discuss the #1 rule: DO NOT TOUCH THE ELF, and name our new friend. The naming process wasn't anything fancy. Every child got to come up with one name, and I wrote 23 names on the board. I would like to tell you they had some cute name ideas, but the names were pretty generic like "Bob". I have a special friend in my room that has some challenges and my kids all take such great care of this little guy. For whatever reason, this friend chose "Ebs". After each child came up with a name, each child got to vote for one name and we took the top 5-6. It was between "Ebs" and "Sparkle". Then we voted between those 2 names and it was unanimous! Ebs was our elf's name! And I absolutely LOVED it!
**Let's just say I'm not the teacher who gets to school super early. I'm doing real good to be there at 7:50... School starts at 8! :/ Part of it is because I live 30+ minutes away, and part of it is because I'm just not a morning person. My advice is to move your elf before you leave each day! There was no way I was going to have time in the mornings.
So Day 2 we saw this:
Ebs brought us his movie so we watched it on this afternoon. It was very cute, and I recommend it. We also started a journal from MISS GALVIN LEARNS:
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We wrote a sentence or two each day about what Ebs was doing or what he brought us and drew a picture. This was usually our morning work during breakfast and didn't take too much time.
Here are a few pics of his classroom adventures. (iPhone pics of course because remembering my nice camera just isn't going to happen either. :/ I wish I could say I took a picture every day, but it just didn't happen. I was sick a couple of days, and just forgot some others.
My Favorite:
As you probably noticed, Ebs brought us some treats. Most of them were from Dollar Tree. Lots of candy, pencils, erasers, crazy straws, chapstick that we used as a smelly stamp on our hands... just simple easy treats.
A few of the shenanigans I didn't get a picture of:
*A sick day (after a day of Way.Too.Much.Talking!) This was the all over Pinterest Kleenex box bed. This worked like a charm! The kids felt so bad and were really on their best behavior that day.
*Climbing inside a bag of M&Ms
*Sitting on my desk
*Sitting on the Elmo
*I have these:
Click Picture for LINK
*Ebs was hanging upside down from one of these one day.
*His departure was simple. I had thought about a letter to the kids or something more exciting, but I was out of energy by that day. He was hanging / peeking out from behind the blinds in the window and had used marshmallows to spell out "BYE" on the counter below.
**During our classroom Christmas party, one of my moms told me that the Elf was the first thing her daughter came home talking about every day. The mom said, "They'll remember this forever!" That made it ALL WORTH WHILE. I want them to remember the FUN stuff!!
And that was it!! I'm so so so very glad I put the extra cash and energy into this. My kids were far from perfect, but I do feel like it helped with behavior during the last 3 weeks when the kids are so hyper! They were so excited each morning to come in and find Ebs.
Did you have an Elf? Are you super creative with your Elf's shenanigans? Or are you a Pinterest copier like me?!?! Ha!
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