Holly Bloggy Christmas, thank you's, and classroom pictures (edited)

Christmas at our house was wonderful this year. We got to see my nephew who goes to music school in New York City, spent good times with my family and my husband's family. His mom lives most of the year in northern Panama so we don't see her except for a couple months this time of year. All went well and I got an ipad from my favorite Santa (my husband). I could hardly put it down! The only bad thing was that I left all my password info for my blog at home. Normally I'm always logged in, so I was stuck! I read blogs like crazy and it sounds like there were a lot of very merry Christmas' out there.
I really need to say some thank you's.
Thank you to
Mrs. Cockrell who was my Secret Santa in the Holly Bloggy Christmas. She sent me a fabulous gift of hot chocolate mixes, biscotti (YUMMO!), and a pencil vase I cannot wait to put on my desk at school! Thank you, thank you. I love all of it! The personalized "H" will have a special place in my home office. ( I opened the gift in a hurry before we left town and was so excited about the items on top that I hadn't looked under the rest of the tissue. )

Thank you to Caitlin and Sarah too for organizing this Christmas exchange.

Another thank you goes out to Christina Bainbridge for sharing her Christmas Around the World activities. I did them with my class the last week of school (December 19-22, yes were there 3 days before Christmas!). My kiddos LOVED it! I don't know about your class population, but mine is quite limited in their experiences. For example, the ocean is about 6 miles away and some of first graders have never been to the beach. Many of them know little of the world beyond the distance they walk. So it was fun to expose them to different places and cultures. Here is a picture of the "souveniers" my students made. If you don't already do something like this in your class at Christmas, I highly recommend it. Also, her power points are AMAZING too!

Boy it's taking me a long time to finish writing this. My little kitty Stevie crawled up on my lap is laying on my left arm. But we've been gone for 4 days and I can't bear to make him move. So typing is slow.
I have been wanting to post some classroom Christmas pictures, but it just got too busy before the holiday. The last week of school was so much fun. I have a wonderful class so they're able to do a lot and although they were extremely excited, their behavior was still great.

Every year we make a graph of the favorite Christmas story I read to them (I select a few to choose from) and I re-read that story on the last day before break.








And the winner was...

 

My Christmas party is a Gingerbread House Social where parents come and make gingerbread houses with their children. This year I had the best attendance ever! Only one student was without a parent. She made her house with another parent instead. Here are some photos of their creations.

I'm so glad to have finally been able to post those things. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas a home and at school. I'm on break now, so I still have a pajamas on and I'm loving it. But I need to go take a shower so I can meet my husband for lunch. He works near a golf club that has fabulous taco salads, but they only serve them every other Tuesday for lunch. So YIPPEE! It's that Tuesday and I don't have to work! Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to lunch I go!
(Followed by more blog stalking of course!)
Have a great day!
Chrissy