Classroom Elf on the Shelf Ideas

I know, I know. It's almost Christmas and most of us are out of school and done with classroom elves...but I just had to share some of the adorable, laugh-out-loud things our Scout Elf, Stella, did this year! :)

Each year I keep a calendar of what my elf will be doing and a breakdown of each item I will need. I always make sure I have the materials for the next day in my bag. For example, Monday morning-Tuesday's materials...Tuesday morning-Wednesday's materials...and so on. Lists keep me sane! :)



Here is just a handful of Stella's shenanigans this year! They're all mixed up, but you get the idea! :)


What are your favorite Elf on the Shelf ideas?

October, November, & December Quick Review ;)

Hey, y'all!

MIA doesn't even begin to explain where I've been for the past 3 months. As I wipe the virtual cobwebs off of my blog, let me start by reintroducing myself. My name is Breanna and I'm a kindergarten teacher. ;) Back to my super great excuse as to why I haven't been blogging in awhile forever. Blogging would pop-up in my mind every-so-often, but then I would get sidetracked and start remembering everything I needed to get done for tomorrow or the upcoming week. If you know me, total shocker (sarcasm). ;) To get back in the swing of things, I thought I'd share a quick monthly review of how things have been going in K since the end of September and throw a few pictures in here and there. Going from about 35 days to now 88 days in kindergarten is a huge jump for these little 5/6 year old kinders! My, oh my, how they've grown! :)

October:
{The 10th month of the year aka almost way too long ago that I don't remember what happened. :) }
-Endured the craziness of Halloween
-Survived Red Ribbon Week dress-up days
-Made glow-in-the-dark goo to go with our Goodnight Goon story

November:
-Conferences: We decided to hold these conferences at the beginning of November. Our school holds parent-teacher-student conferences using the data the kids keep in their personal data binders. This was so awesome to see them take ownership of their learning and really show their parents how much they've grown and what they still might need to work on.
-Stone Soup: reading the different versions, comparing them, making the soup
-Little Turkey Hats
-Thanksgiving placemats for a parent keepsake and to eat our Stone Soup on :)
-Break-throughs in writing workshop and directed drawings...I have a little one who likes to constantly peek at my drawings that I do with them when I am not conferencing. I almost had tears in my eyes when I saw how her drawing looked exactly like mine, but she added her own words to match the picture!

**Link to my FREE Parent-Teacher-Student Conference Forms

**Link to my FREE Turkey Hat Craft

December: (I will make sure to do individual posts about classroom Elf on the Shelf ideas and Parent Gifts)

-Stella our Scout Elf arrived

-eLearning Practice Night
-Reindeer food
-Assessments
-Gingerbread Hunt
-Parent gifts

That was an extremely quick way to recap three months of A LOT of learning in Room 32. How does time fly by so fast?

Apple Day in K!

The past two weeks we focused on apples, apples, and more apples. We looked at the parts of an apple, taste-tested some apples, learned about Johnny Appleseed, sang some fun apple songs, and had an apple day. Here are some pictures from our week(s)! :)

(It was also career day, so that is why you will see these little kinders dressed like absolute professional policemen, firemen, chefs, etc.)

~Apple Tasting:
We were able to taste 7 different kinds of apples. It was so fun to see how some of them enjoyed soft apples and some liked the crunchy, tart apples (my favorites!)

We took a vote and they loved Honeycrisp. We lined them up from greatest to least and it made a 6-5-4-3-2-1-0 pattern. Hello, fabulous teaching point! 

~The Johnny Appleseed Festival is near my hometown, so it's a must-see every year! (The chicken-n-dumplins are to DIE FOR!)

~Apple Day Fun!

We learned all about apples and it was finally time to have a fun celebratory day of a pretty delicious snack: apples. 

We had 5 different rotations: caramel/chocolate apple snack, apple Jenga towers, Johnny Appleseed puppet craft and video, apple print pattern painting, and apple science. We started the morning making our applesauce, so it would have enough time to mix and cook all its delicious goodness. 

My rotation was apple science and I knew my kids would die for apple explosions aka Apple-canoes. I used these ingredients below and it created an awesome reaction. (I added food coloring just for a fun color) I had the kids create a hypothesis for what they thought would happen. I explained what a hypothesis was and told them to draw a picture of their prediction.

I planned another experiment just in case our first one went by really fast. This one was super easy and the kids had to predict whether or not the apple would float or sink. It was amazing to see how many thought it would actually sink! 

Here's a view at some of the stations from other classes!

-Johnny Appleseed Puppets and Story/Video

-Apple Boat Snacks with Caramel and Chocolate

-Apple Jenga Towers! JUST LOOK AT HER PURE JOY AND SMILE! :)

At the end of the day, we were so excited to enjoy our applesauce. They were slightly confused when they saw the chunky applesauce, but hey, it still tasted AH-MAZ-ING!

Do you have a fun apple activity you do with your kids?