Five for Friday: More Christmas Fun!

Hello again! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday to share more of the Christmas fun going on in my classroom this week.

On Monday night, my island had its annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Everyone gathers at our government administration building grounds to wait for the tree to be lit and to see Santa. People from the community perform on stage as we come together to celebrate the start of the Christmas season together. This photo is terrible quality, but I wanted to have something to share on here. The tree in the photo is a fake tree; we used to have a super tall real one, but there was a major hurricane 7 years ago that destroyed it. 

Speaking of Christmas trees, I finally put a topper on our classroom tree. It was looking a little plain at the top and I found this sparkly little bow topper at a store earlier this week. I think it definitely completes the look!

Although I'm not doing elf on the shelf, I had to get it on some of the elf fun with my class this week. I recently purchased several new Christmas books to read aloud to my class this year, including The Littlest Elf by Brandi Dougherty. It was the perfect book to get my kids thinking about what they would do if they were elves. I highly recommend getting it if you don't have it! I found this adorable free elf craft on TPT from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten. Instead of having my students do the elf application that's included in the craft, I made an "If I were an elf..." writing prompt for them. Click here to download it for yourself! 

Although I love where I teach, one of the most frustrating things is not being able to put up student work in our hallways. All of our classrooms are accessed directly from the outside, so we have no bulletin boards out there for student work. We do have a couple of really small boards with a glass cover over the cork for protection from rain and wind, but they aren't big enough to post work up and are used for star students, school rules, and other small displays. I post as much student work in my classroom as I can, but occasionally I want the rest of the school to get a chance to see what we've been up to. I put these elves outside at the worst possible time. We had some major rain and wind in the days after I posted them and by Friday, one elf had come off and another had lost its head.  We managed to locate the missing elf, but sadly, the head of that other elf is yet to be found.  #teacherproblems

We also made First Grade Blue Skies' adorable ornament craft for our window display and Linda Kamp's "I Shine When I'm Kind" Christmas light craftivity. I love how festive they look outside our classroom!

I took photos of my kiddos wearing their choice of a Santa hat, reindeer antlers, or a red headband with a cute Christmas bow. I also had them stand in front of our classroom Christmas tree. I glued the pictures to the front of the light crafts and they added a really cute and personal touch! I'm planning to send the photos out to parents as well, so they will do double duty! :)

On the inside, they wrote about how they can be kind. They did an awesome job and the kids who pass by our classroom have really enjoyed reading all of their responses! (I got this craft up kind of late, but that's probably for the best. Colored paper fades super fast in the sun, so I'm sure it would already be faded out if we had done it two weeks ago.) It was a really easy and meaningful craftivity though and I will definitely be repeating it every year as we talk about kindness at Christmastime. How do you incorporate kindness in your classroom for Christmas? 

Thanks for staying with me until the end of this post! Don't forget to head back to Doodle Bugs Teaching to read the other Five for Friday posts. I am loving reading about all of the fun holiday activities that are happening in classrooms all over the world. :)