Jingle's Wild Week in Review

Kind of frustrated that my wi-fi is not working on my tablets. I have taken some cute pictures to go with this post but I cannot get them off of my tablet! I have been trying for the past couple of hours without any luck, it is sad that it tells you that it can't connect because of a weak signal strength but it shows that it has a strong connection strength.  I'm hoping that this issue is because of the very gloomy day that we are having today and not my brand new router. I will be adding the pictures as soon as my wi-fi wants to work again.  Anyways, back to my post. **Update** I finally have access to my pictures, enjoy!

Our elf, Jingle, had a crazy, fun week this week. He went fishing for our beta fish, Millie, he build a cup tower with our sight word cups, he brought in and decorated a little tree for our classroom, and he was sitting in our awesome chair reading Rudolph! I have had quite a few students asking if I am the one that is moving Jingle and I always respond "No, I'm not moving him, he was there when I got here in the morning." Jingle has a few more surprises in store for the last 10 days of school before Winter Break. Wow, I can't believe that we are down to the last two weeks of school!

We also started working on our parent gifts this week. I'm sure that you have seen the cute little snowmen that are made out of a battery operated tea light. Since I could not find little hats to put on the snowmen, I am having my students make them out of Model Magic. We are going to let our snowmen sit and dry as long as possible before we begin to wrap them. They are really cute, rather inexpensive, and my students we able to make them in about 10 minutes. They are already asking when they can take them home! The only thing that I have left to do to them is to either glue on a ribbon to make it an ornament. My students are also making a picture ornament, I had bought a kit years ago, that I found this year, and our PTA gave us a set. So, it seems like my students' parents will be receiving 3 ornaments this year.

I can't wait to see these all finished!

Now to start planning for the upcoming school week. This week, we are going to be working on double addition facts, long i vowel sound, adjectives, and starting our Winter Holidays Around the World, I get to teach about Germany.

December and the Return of Jingle Peppermint Bell!

It was really hard getting up for school today.  I really enjoyed my 5 day break, I was good and only did school work yesterday!  I have forgotten how good it feels to take time for myself and not constantly work on school things.

Last year, I started Elf on the Shelf with my class.  They loved our elf Jingle Peppermint Bell, yes our elf has a full name.  My students would bring in candy canes for Jingle to eat, in his first letter he talked about how he loved to eat candy canes.  Jingle ate many candy canes last year, he would eat parts of them when we were at resources or at lunch, he is such a sneaky elf!

Today was Jingle's first day with our class.  Jingle wasn't very creative today in his hiding place, he was just sitting on the top of our SmartBoard.  Jingle is ready to play some tricks with my students this year!  Tomorrow he is making a tower using paper cups!  He is also planning on having another glow-stick party with our "quiet critter", class turtles, and our fish, going fishing for Millie (our beta fish), making a snowman, bringing in and decorating a small Christmas tree, and wrapping up our desks with wrapping paper for our last day before break!

My fingers and toes are crossed that having Jingle in our class will help with some of the behavior issues that we are having.  I have a group of first graders that love to talk, they also love to tattle on each other and are too concerned with what everyone else is doing to pay attention to our lessons.  I'm hoping that these issues stop soon!

My teacherspayteachers store is on sale for the next day, be sure to check it out!  Don't forget to use CYBER during checkout to save even more.

Amber