December happenings...

So, as previously mentioned, I am the Hospitality Chair for my school.  December is our craziest month...so I just wanted to share what we did this month.  :-)

It's going to be a long post, so thanks in advance for sticking it out.

Every other month we get together to celebrate the faculty/staff birthdays from those two months.  Our Pre-K/2nd grade teachers hosted the November/December Birthday Club.  They put together a Cookie Decorating Party for us.  It was delicious!  The only problem was getting out of the chairs...adults are not meant to sit in chairs for 4 year olds.  :-P

 Every year we have a staff Christmas party.  This year, our Teacher-of-the-Year was our gracious Hostess.  We always have food, and play Dirty Santa.  Which, if you've never played that before, you should.  The blonde lady above is our principal.  She really didn't have a choice in the gift she chose, as one of our Pre-K teachers made a gift with her in mind.  The ornament she's holding has a gift card to amazon inside of it.  Along with pictures of our principal making the goofiest faces.  It was hilarious!

Yes, our faculty does play Heads Up!  Which, if you don't know what it is...it's an app by Ellen deGeneres.  Download it, you'll love it!

We started something new this year called December Eats and Treats.  Essentially it's a dessert potluck.  Everyone (that wants to) brings a dessert and puts it on the stage.  During lunch all faculty and staff members are free to go on stage and get some desserts.  I was a little worried at first, but more desserts showed up after I took these pictures.  And yes, that cake on the left was homemade by the wife of one of our 2nd grade teachers.

Last, but not least, we had an Ugly Christmas Sweater Contest.  This is the second year we've had it, and more teachers join every year.  The gentleman in the gray sweater with the face on it was our winner this year.

I just wanted to throw this picture in, because if I didn't have this lady (my music teacher) I wouldn't be able to do half the things we do for Hospitality.  She is amazing and is always willing to do whatever is needed.

Thanks for sticking out this long post.  I hope it gave you some ideas for things to do at your school.  If you do something different, I am ALWAYS up for hearing new ideas...please share!

Until next time!

Thanksgiving activity...what?

I know what you're thinking...

"Thanksgiving?  In December?"

But, I haven't found the motivation to write about the ONE Thanksgiving activity I got to do until now.  And really, I should be sleeping.  I have to get up in 7ish hours and drive 7.5 hours to northern Mississippi (pray for me y'all).

Anyway...

because I am now ESE, it's hard for me to do anything extra.  I have a set reading series that I MUST follow.  And I do love it, and it does work...so I'm really not complaining.  I also am trying to fit in all of the grade level math standards, and the standards from previous years that my kiddos don't understand.  So, anything extra is not gonna fly.

Luckily, I have a group of 4th graders that came to for writing (well, had...people weren't thrilled they were getting pulled).  So, for our LAST writing group, I decided to do a Thanksgiving craft.  I know I probably saw this somewhere, but for the life of me I can't remember where.  And I also forgot to take "after" pictures.  You know, the ones of completed projects.

*sigh*

Anyway, directions:

1. We created giant turkey cut-outs.
   
2. Each student then cut out feathers out of certain colors (the colors happened to be what I had scraps of).
   
3. The feathers were then glued onto the turkey.
   
4. A turkey related word was written on each feather.
   
5. (due to time) each child was put in charge of one feather.  We talked about thesauri (the plural for thesaurus, in case you were wondering.  :-P ), and how to use the guide words.
   
6. Each student looked up their words and then wrote the synonyms on that feather.
   
7. Students then shared their synonyms so we could write down all of the synonyms.

Here are some pictures of my kiddos working on them:

I'm going to try really hard to get into the groove of writing...and I have planned out my next few posts.  I'm just not sure what to write about after that.  It's hard to find things to share when you feel like you're not doing anything exciting.

Until next time!