December Hodgepodge

Woke up yesterday morning and it hit me...I hadn't had a single cup of coffee for 7 days. What was happening to me??? CouldI actually survive without my daily cup of caffeine intake after all??? Survive...yes. Survive in an organized and clean environment...no...heck no. A quick look around my house would confirm this. It was a wreck. Stuff was everywhere, my closet was a certified disaster zone, and my big plans for getting January hammered out before school starts back up...uhhhh I hadn't stepped one foot much less a toe into that territory. I made a cup of caffeine motivation and my closet got organized, the kitchen was tamed, Christmas gifts were neatly put away, the fridge was cleaned out, and papers were graded. I treated myself with sushi.

Snap to today where my closet has exploded {{again}} and the daunting task of planning out January is hanging over my head. My silver lining: I slept in until 10 this morning and only had one teaching related nightmare. Before I enter full blown crazy teacher mode and tackle January I need to catch up on all of the things that happened in December.

Hodgepodge Stop #1: Elf on the Shelf Invasion 2K13
I blogged about Week 1 of Layla's invasion {{here}} && then life got too busy to make the blog trilogy that I planned to link up with a reality. I know it's way late, but it's never too early to start planning for next year! Here's Week 2 of Layla's elf antics:

 

 

I stuck with the plan for days 6 and 7. Layla made a Christmas count down chain (they died with excitement) and she relaxed in a bath of cotton balls sans relaxation mask because she had kids to watch (ain't nobody got time to sleep when kids are acting fool). For day 8 my original plan had Layla making a Q-Tips snowflake and scatter brained me forgot the dagum Q-Tips! I swapped in Day 9's antic, Layla hung from a tissue paper pom, and an absolute disaster was avoided. Then a true disaster occurred. My normally talkative and wiggly bunch took a double dose of drive your teacher crazy at lunch, so to prove a point Layla didn't fly back to the North Pole that night. Instead she stayed perched in the pom. On Day 9 they were heart broken to find Layla in the same spot because she was too exhausted from all of the talking and wiggling that they did on Day 8 to fly. They really tried to hold it together during our morning portion of the day so  during special area Layla climbed down from the pom, built a snowflake and left a note. Who knew a little note was all it would take to wrangle them back in to acting like the well oiled machine that I've trained them to be?? In case your eyeballs can't read that small of print on the picture, this is what I schemed up that worked like only magic could: "Boys and Girls, I like my spot way up high, but please be good so I can fly!" They were as good as gold for the rest of Day 9. On Day 10 this teacher was way too exhausted to make the gingerbread ornament that Layla was supposed to bring according to my master plan so I had to improvise. Layla climbed up the tree in our library and perched closest to the most talkative of my tables. Again, magic...pure magic.


Elf on the Shelf Invasion: Week 3

 

Week 3 only had 1 small deviation from the plan. On Day 11 Layla made a magnetic letter message. For Day 12 Layla got wrapped up in the lights on our We Can objective board. On Day 13 Layla spied my delicious hot chocolate goldfish crackers and went fishing for them (the kids went nuts). For Day 14 Layla was supposed to have a snowball (cotton ball) fight with the bear. Being that I spent Day 13 trying to reel them in from the excitement of Layla going fishing, I put two and two together and realized that a snowball fight wouldn't be the best match up with the pounding headache I woke up with. I opted for a less crazed option and that was to have Layla sky diving from the old/ancient/dinosaur/unused TV in our room. With Day 15 being her final day with us, Layla brought cookies and a goodbye letter. She was supposed to bring a marshmallow/candy cane treat, but store bought cookies were so much more appealing with the time crunch I was facing. After all, cookies are always a safe bet to make && as predicted they ate them all up...clever huh? In addition to the daily tricks (and sometimes treats) courtesy of Layla, she also left encouraging notes to my friends who were on task, following directions, and turning in beautifully completed work. I can't be the only one out there completely sick of the sloppy work?? Chickens could put a pencil between their toes and make things look neater than the work some of my friends are turning in. 

 Again, who knew that a simple note could turn kids back in the right direction...well...most of them.


Layla invading our class was only part of the madness that December brought. We also had our annual Christmas carol performance which was a-d-o-r-a-b-l-e as usual. All of the practice and constant discussions of appropriate singing voices (not screaming/screeching/grumbling) paid off and the performance was a crowd pleaser. A lot of my sweet little carolers didn't make it to the show. One didn't want to be on stage (I totally get it), a few didn't have transportation (parents working), and some were just no shows. Of course I had to snag a picture with the ones who did come to sing their little hearts out && I have to say they were the cutest little carolers ever! (Sunglasses added to conceal their identities...much more clever than the typical black bar huh?).

With all the fun we had in December, some learning was tossed into the mix too. We finally finished up our opinion writing unit && can I just say how absolutely heart warming it is to see them finally internalizing what I've been blabbering on about for 5 weeks?? Seriously I almost fainted hearing them talking their way through opinion piece parts as they put their ideas on paper (opinion sentence, reason #1, reason #2, closure sentence). I forgot to take pictures of their opinion writings about a trip to the North Pole, but I do remember one kid's opinion verbatim (inventive spelling not included): "I think that a trip to the North Pole would be a terrible idea. I think this because the North Pole is very cold. Like very, very cold. You could turn into an ice cube! What if you got lost up there? You could die from being cold! That is why I think going to the North Pole would be a terrible idea."  Truth! Absolutely the truth...and hilarious! We did a flashback to narrative writing with our "If I was Rudolph" craftivity. We were a little rocky with it in the planning stages, but they slowly started remembering that they rocked their faces off with this before our opinion unit started. It doesn't get much cuter than inventive spelling!

In math we worked on what felt like hundreds of topics. The most tricky of them: missing addends/subtrahends and word problems incorporating these missing components. Thankfully they did so much better this time around proving my thought that September is far too early to discuss such a topic with first graders. Their poor little minds were blown by the concept back in September, and they rocked their socks off this month. We practiced, practiced, practiced...and then we practiced some more. Then came the craftivity. Most of my friends did awesome...&& then some acted like they hadn't been making math happen all week. Step 2 was taking what we learned about finding missing components and incorporating that knowledge to solve word problems. It was madness at first...and then a beautiful thing happened. It connected in their brains that they knew how to figure out the missing parts without having to read every single word in the problem. They followed the steps: find your numbers, use the part/part/whole box, find your whole, take away your given part and BAM...your missing part is found! Problem solved! We still have some work to do before everyone in the class feels comfortable with it, but dangit when they're making missing component word problems on their own and showing their work to solve it for fun...I'm declaring a win!

&&& there's my December...most of it. I could blog for hours about everything that we did during December, but there's chicken noodle soup to make && a hungry husband to feed. Until next time, live, love, && enjoy the rest of what 2013 has to bring!

 

Elf in the Classroom {{Week 1}}

Grocery shopping is done, all of my papers are graded, lesson plans have been submitted, I found chevron wrapping paper && I have a cup of coffee with a brand new creamer (Hot for Cookie...I couldn't resist). Life is good friends, life is good. There are 10 days left before Christmas Break. Yes, yes I know the P.C. term would be Winter Break, but I'm tired of being P.C. all the time so I'm letting my Christmas light shine and I'm jingling bells all the way through the 10 day mark. This is truly my favorite time of year both in and out of the classroom. Buuuut Christmas at home is completely different than Christmas at school. One is definitely more relaxing than the other...I'll give you one guess as to which side the relaxation meter points to. If I had to pick a song to describe Christmas at Home...Silent Night. Everything's peaceful (unless the doorbell rings...release the hounds!), it's cozy, and there are plenty of comfy blankets to curl up in with a cup of coffee.  Christmas at school...well that would be more like Rocking Around the Christmas Tree. Holy sugar cookies my kids are all jacked up on the Christmas spirit and they're barely holding on to reality.

I can't be the only one with a few tricks up their sleeve to help contain the madness from boiling over. &&&& I'm definitely not the only one out there to send for help from the Elf Squad. If you've never heard of the Elf on the Shelf I'm not sure what rock you've been living under, but you need to google it. Pure genius I tell you! Once upon a blog ago I posted my schedule for the elf antics that are hitting my classroom this year. You can find that {{here}}. Since then I've discovered through Instagram that there's an entire hash tag devoted to elves in the classroom and I love hash tags almost as much as I love chevron. I also love that I'm not the only one that puts in extra work to conduct under cover elf operations...I was starting to worry that I was a complete whackadoodle party of one so thanks a million Instagram. Through my Insta-hash tag browsing, I found a blog link up featuring classroom elves from all over the place. My heart fluttered because 1. I'm a dork (clearly) and 2. I'm nosey and like to see what other people are doing with their elves (honesty is the best policy). Naturally I'm joining the Elf in the Classroom link up because I think Layla the elf is pretty amazing and making new friends is pretty swell too!

 Layla arrived nameless on Monday morning like a wrecking ball...seriously chaos erupted when they came back from special area && found her. Before I had the chance to read the book && explain some ground rules for keeping her around curiosity got the best of one of my loves and he touched her. You would have thought the Grinch himself had arrived in B-104 to snatch all of our Christmas spirit away. It was a border line riot. Kids were angry. Some were close to tears. My curious friend was crushed that she lost her magic because of him. Things were about to get ugly so I set my phone to a Santa-ish chime alert tone, announced that I just texted Santa to ask him to fix her, and made my phone go off. I "read" Santa's response "Ho! Ho! Ho! My sweet friends. I'll let this one slide, but if it happens again back to the North Pole your elf must ride!" I held my breath praying that they would fall for it...and they did. Bless you Apple for that magical ring tone. After I narrowly escaped from having to crush a full blown 6 year old riot, I quickly read the book that comes with the elf and all was well. Everyone knew not to touch her...everyone knew she was watching them...and everyone knew that she needed a name. Compared to last year they rocked the name brainstorming activity. I only had to explain that she couldn't have a boy name and that we weren't going to name her after anyone in the classroom once (no, not even Mrs. Owen could make the cut for the naming ballot...they tried). On the ballot: Snow, Sophie, Sophia, Layla, Bella, Emily, Emma, Belle, and Elfa. To narrow it down to the top 2 names I did a quick raise your hand to vote session. The top 2 contenders: Bella and Layla. For the final vote, each friend got a sticky note that they wrote their name choice on. All of the ballots were counted and the winning name was...Layla. Day 1 was in the books. Easy as pie.

Day 2 Layla climbed up our mini Christmas tree. Day 3 she got into the glitter...I left an apology letter to the custodians because glitter is an ugly, ugly thing to clean up.

Day 4 Layla got into the jewels and used them to build her name. Their faces were priceless and hearing them talk to their friends about it...even better.  One of my friends thinks the world revolves around him so naturally "Oh she definitely did that because of me...because I love diamonds. This elf is awesome!!!!"

Things were good in B-104 and I should have known things were too good to be true...call it hopeful...call it naive, but by the end of Thursday I'm surprised I had any hair left on my head. The tattling had to stop (or at least get bumped down a few hundred notches) so Layla cranked up the magic factor && moved twice in one day on Friday. I had her set up on the lamp with a snowman book for the beginning of Day 5. After special area they came in to find her with lights strung around our "We Can" objective board and a special snowman snack for all the friends who were not currently on the naughty-ish list. Worked like a charm and I guarantee you the kids running around like mountain dew was spewing from the water fountain won't be letting all shades of their craziness loose again. FYI assemble snowmen at school because they DON'T travel well...at all...true story. Week 2 of Layla's observations start tomorrow.

Layla watching works well in managing the Christmas craziness, but extra reinforcement never hurts. Enter: The Holly Jolly Basket. In my room we use the clip chart model. I know everyone has their differing opinions on the use of clip charts, but I happen to really like it as I  focus more on the positive aspect of it rather than the negative. Anyway, in a nut shell, everyone has a clip that they clip up or down to different colors based on their behavior. Green, blue, purple and pink are good colors to end the day on because you earn a sticker. Most days everyone earns their sticker and they're smart enough to figure out you only need to stay on green to get one. MOST of my kids strive to get on a higher color than green, but some of mine are fine with just doing the minimum required to earn a sticker. To encourage all of my friends to aim a little higher than "average behavior" I brought in a "Boo Bucket" in October. It was filled with Halloween treats: pencils, erasers, candy, the whole nine yards. If they were already on "pink" (our highest color) and still behaving perfectly they got to take their clip off the chart and clip it onto the bucket. At the end of the day if their clip was still there they got to pick a treat from the bucket. They begged for a Gobble Gobble bucket, but I was slack and it didn't happen. The last 2 days before Thanksgiving break made me realize that I was going to need a little something extra to make it through December. The Holly Jolly bucket was my "something extra." They're in love and that makes me a happy/less stressed teacher. After all, hair is a good thing to have and hopefully the basket combined with Layla will help me keep it.

I have a lot left on my list of things to conquer today (yes, I hear you mountain of laundry screaming my name), so for now I need to shut down this faithful laptop of mine. Until next time, live, love && enjoy the magic of the season!