Monthly Archives: December 2013

December 31, 2013 · 11:09 pm

Fun with Elves!

We had a lot of fun  with elves this month!  We have Sparkles, our Elf on the Shelf who teamed up with Gus, our resident ghost mischief-maker working together to leave surprises for the children almost every day!  They left messages, puzzles, stickers, suggestions for stories to read, and sometimes special treats to eat!  I managed to catch them in the act using a special app called Santa Spy Cam!  They built a castle using the blocks in the classroom at our Christmas center and filled it with candycanes.   The video above is the evidence!

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We also filled out applications to become elves.  I sent them home for Christmas.  Hope you enjoyed them!

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We also had a surprise visit from Santa Claus!

He spent a long time visiting with the children and told us a lot about elves.  Apparently their favourite food is candycanes!

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There were a few elves in his sack that tried to get out but he managed to keep them hidden!

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Our Polar Express day was a lot of fun!  Thank you to everyone for supporting this day!  We made hot chocolate and had yummy cookies.  We used up the leftover graham crackers from the Gingerbread house building to make some S’mores!  Very yummy!

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We listened to the story first and then we each got a jingle bell just like in the story.  Luckily, no one had a hole in their pocket!

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We also danced to these two Christmas Just Dance Kids videos!  The Grade Sevens came to help us dance to the Santa one!

This is the Jingle Bells one!  Lots of fun!

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Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!  Have a Happy New Year!

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December 11, 2013 · 10:02 pm

Christmas Tree Fun!

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We have been having fun using the Doodle Buddy app to draw Christmas trees.  This is a fun app to use!  The children are using the drawing tools, the stamp tools, and learning to use the text tool to add their names.  We have been saving our pictures to the camera roll and we are planning to import them into another app to create a Christmas tree book!

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These are just a few of the trees the students have created!  They love to draw on the iPad and everyone is eagerly waiting for their turn!

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We also made a Count up Christmas tree book today in between decorating gingerbread houses with our Big Buddies!

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They had fun adding the funky cover to their booklets!

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We have been having fun with our Christmas homework!  I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this cool gingerbread house that came this week! See the light inside?  I wish I had remembered to take pictures of all the other great things that came!  We have had some really cool stuff!  Angels, dancing gingerbread men, trains, stuffies, chocolates, books, and special ornaments to name just a few!  It is so interesting to hear how everyone celebrates the holidays!

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And then we made real gingerbread houses today!

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Don’t they look great! Too yummy!  I have to admit that I asked to taste some of the Chocolate Kisses!!  Hope all the houses made it home in one piece!

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December 8, 2013 · 9:13 pm

Christmas Card Fun!

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We made Christmas cards this week for a special project that we are taking part in this year!  It is called by Holiday Card Exchange Project which matches us with 29 other schools across the continent of North America.  It is part of a variety of projects coordinated by Jennifer Wagner’s Projects by Jen.  We are sending cards to a variety of places in the United States as well as one other school in Canada in Ontario.  Our cards are going all over the United States.  We send one card to each of the schools on our list and they send us a card back!  We will be mapping out where our cards originate.  A fun way to learn more about the world.  I will try to find pictures about each of the places our cards come from!  The theme of the cards was supposed to be Mittens, Caps, and Scarfs.  We focused on the mittens.

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We had to write about one interesting fact about our school and some of the details about our class!  The children brainstormed some ideas and then chose their favorites to include in the card.  We had to include some details about our school and classroom as well as the average temperature in Nanaimo on December 15th.

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I found a special punch that lets us punch out snowflakes to add to our cards.  It was a huge hit!

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I mailed the cards on Friday and hopefully we will be receiving some cards soon!

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We had a great time making these snowman ornaments with our buddies!  We hope you like them!  We had fun making them!

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They all have such personality!

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We have also been having fun learning about the special ways we celebrate Christmas.  Over the next few weeks, the children will be taking turns bringing home our Christmas homework!  We have four Christmas bags containing some “homework” for you to do about how your family celebrates the holidays.  One part of the homework is sharing something special you do at your house to celebrate Christmas.

To start the bags off I had the first share!  As my parents were Dutch, we celebrated Sinterclass.  I brought my wooden shoes to school and shared how Sinterclass filled my shoes when I was a little girl.  We learned some phrases in Dutch and I taught the children how to count to 10 in Dutch.  We put my wooden shoes out the door and Sinterclass came!

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We really enjoyed the first four Christmas bag shares!  The children really enjoy trying to guess what is in the bag!

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Can’t wait to see the next group!

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