The Beginning of Holiday Fun

Ah, Saturday- why can't you always be here?

It was a busy week in the life of Kelly, involving some cool things. I'm doing a special family traditions project in my classroom and it began this week. The kids made collages of their family traditions and a few parents came in to teach us more. On Monday a mom came in to tell us about St. Nicholas Day One of the traditions of this holiday is that kids take off one boot, put it on the window sill and St. Nick fills it with treats. So... she had all the kids (and teachers actually) take off their shoes and we filled them with treats while she was talking. Wish I could show you the kids faces when they discovered their shoes filled with treats :)

On Wednesday, I got to try on an Indian sari (in my favorite color!)...

Very cool.

But the highlight of the week came on Thursday when I hosted my gingerbread decorating party for some of my old kiddos. Again, I can't show you the adorableness of the kids but I can show you their creations...

By P., 4th grader:

By E., 3rd grader:

By A., 2nd grader:

There was one more, but I didn't get a picture of her house without her :) Too bad because she was the most impulsive gingerbread house designer. She was all about taking a handful of frosting and a handful of marshmallows and just throwing them on the house. Surprisingly, it looked pretty cool in the end. They all did an awesome job and some had never decorated a gingerbread house before. Plus we had a lot of fun. Eric had his marshmallow "gun" out and was trying to knock down gingerbread houses with it- they thought it was pretty hilarious. We may or may not be finding random marshmallows around the house for weeks to come :) Oh well, it's worth it. Sometimes it's refreshing to hang out with well- behaved, fun children who do not need modeling, oral and written step by step directions, and perhaps a reward at the end to simply take off their coat and sit down at the table, forget actually making the gingerbread house.

Right now I'm gearing up write my first "paper" in a long, happy while. It needs to have a thesis statement and all... boooooo. By gearing up I mean I have papers spread out all around me, but am clearly blogging instead. I also think I'm going to go do a little more Christmas shopping as well. So maybe the thesis paper will have to wait. Maybe it could wait forever...

Just for the record, when I'm a college professor (ha), my assignments are ALL going to be "based on what you have learned in class/reading etc, what things are you already doing right in your classroom and what things do you think you could add to have more benefits for your students? I personally feel like this would be a LOT more useful over thesis statements. But I might be bias, I've always hated thesis statements.

What is everyone up to this weekend?