Five for Friday, PTL!

Wow am I sure glad that it is finally Friday! The kids have been extra crazy this week as I am sure you all know with Christmas break just around the corner (10 days for us!). So here's a look at what we did this week in first grade!

I got this fun idea for practicing with nonstandard units of measurement from Cara Carroll over at The First Grade Parade. It is a measure the teacher activity! My kiddos had so much fun using different things to measure "me" and comparing their estimates to their actual measurements. For this lesson I split the class into two groups which made the group pretty large so next time I will use 3 groups for more efficiency and less opinions! My kiddos were pretty opinionated about what they should use as their units and we had a few tempers flare!

We got desks! If any of you have been following my blog you may know that for this entire semester we have had 5 kidney tables in this room for my kiddos to sit at. Now let me state that I am not against tables, I certainly do not have enough experience to see which works for me better, tables or desks. However, 5 kidney tables in this small room took up an incredible amount of space! I arranged, arranged, rearranged, and rearranged them again. There's only so many ways you can turn those tables! I am so excited to finally have desks. I like how the kids can manage their things better with desks, it makes transition time simpler, and the kids have their own space. PTL!

 

We used this super cute writing paper freebie from Whimsy Workshop to write out letters to Santa. My kids kept asking how Santa was going to get our letters and I told them that I was going to mail their letters to Santa. I haven't quite decided how I am going to pull this off. I may just file these letters away and send them home at the end of the year. I also think Santa may write a letter back to our class! Jodi at Fun in First got a little creative with her Elf's appearance when she wrapped it up and put it in the freezer so it would be cold and icy like it was from the North Pole! So cute!

I found this cute elf application from TpT posted by Kindergarten Squared during my planning period so we filled this out today too! One of my little boys got upset because he did not want to move to the North Pole. I had to explain to him that it was pretend and that he was not going to go and live in the North Pole! Whew! Sometimes, I forget how literal they can be and they believe anything you tell them. So cute that he did not want to leave his family! You can grab these freebie HERE

Lastly, we started on our first country from Hope King's Christmas and Other Holidays Around the World paper bag book. I think the kids really enjoyed learning about how other countries celebrate Christmas and all of their customs. We started out by listing all of the customs in America that we participate in to celebrate Christmas. 

Check back in next Friday to see what else we have gotten ourselves into!