May Your Students Be Merry & Bright { Stephanie @ Mrs. D's Corner }

It took me quite a few days to prep what I wanted to share with you this month because, well, I really got into the holiday spirit this year. It may not have hit me until the beginning of last week, but hey... I'm in the spirit now and that's all that counts, right?! Right! :)

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We started elf on the shelf. I was so stinkin' excited for this, I even made a freebie for everyone. I had done my dear elf last year at my last school, but they were 5th grade so only some of my kids really got into it. I was excited for this year because I have kids in grades 1-4 and figured they'd be super into it.

Lesson. Learned.

The first day our elf "Belle" made an appearance she left some glitter Christmas magic all over the table and the floor. My kids were more excited over the glittery floor than they were about the elf. Fail. The next day, "Belle" brought the kids Hershey kisses Christmas kisses. They still were not thrilled. After about 4 days of the elf moving around, she gave up and now just sits at our kidney bean table while we do classwork. They absolutely LOVE our reindeer pet "Sven" though... he's made more of an impact than our poor elf. Maybe it's because they can touch and cuddle him?!

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One of my most favorite parts about the holidays in my classroom this year is this beauty:

My kids are so excited to get presents in their "socks," that I wanted to share how I made this DIY project with you!

 I grabbed 5 empty copy paper boxes from the copy room. You could certainly use any size of box.

Tape them all together. One of my paraprofessionals helped me with this part! I'm a perfectionist and this would have taken me hours to get right.

 Then you've got to wrap your boxes up with white butcher paper.

You'll want it to be smoothly wrapped around the boxes, but the seems where you've taped the pieces together isn't too big of a deal.

Before the next step, I cut out a brick-sized piece of construction paper and traced bricks onto the white paper with a pencil. This part took the longest, but really helped when it came to painting.

I started out using a small paintbrush. BIG mistake! It took me at least 10 minutes to finish 4 bricks. I did some digging in my closets and found a 2-3" wide sponge. Saved so much time!

This is what this beauty looked like after I finished painting it.

I needed to make some logs and flames to make it more realistic. I grabbed some red, yellow, and brown butcher paper.

To make the logs, I crumbled up some brown paper. You'll have to un-crumble it, then loosely roll it up to create a log-like look.

To create the flames, I cut out shapes like the picture above. To get it to stay straight up, I glued popsicle sticks to the back. I cut small slits into the "logs" and stuck the popsicle sticks into the slits. And that's it!

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( photo credit )

Since I teach a Life Skills class, every Friday we do Fun Food Friday. Thursday is the day we sequence the recipe, which I use BoardMaker to create. Friday morning is when we actually make our no bake recipe. December is themed all around Christmas-y foods and drinks. The kids get so excited for Fun Food Friday and really look forward to it. They do awesome with following the steps of the recipe and making the actual food.

The best part is getting to eat or drink the food we've made! Yesterday we made snowman hot cocoa and next Friday we are going to make chocolate covered pretzels during out holiday party with the parents. I'm excited for the parents to be participating with us this coming Friday. They're going to be so proud of their children!

Merry Christmas everyone! Here's to a quick last couple of days before break!