December Fun In The Classroom

December time means fun, energy, and excitement! We have been having a blast the past few weeks and wanted to share with you what we have been doing.

I have teamed up with Oriental Trading Company this month to fill our classroom with crafts, decorations and more!

This year our whole entire first-grade team spent a week using Gingerbread books. You can read all about our book ideas here. We wanted to add a cute craft at the end of our week and this one from Oriental Trading worked out perfect!! It was so easy too.

The kids followed all the directions and what I LOVED the most is all the pieces were stickers!! NO GLUE was needed! 

click pictures to see them on their website

another brilliant idea was to make them into magnets! So we added each students picture to the face and they became their own gingerbread men!

Each class decorated their door frames with the cute class gingerbreads!

This class showed theirs off before the went outside. The students were so excited!

I also created this writing prompt for students to use to tell me who they would run from.

If you would like a copy of this prompt just click HERE

This week is our last before Winter Break. This week in reading it is ALL about The Polar Express!!

We made these activity books to go along with the story this week.

If you want a copy of this cover just click HERE.

All during the week, we will be looking at different elements of the story. We are using this graphic organizer pack from Primary Graffiti

On Friday we will be having a school wide PJ day and we will all be watching the movie! Once again my team came up with the great idea that we should give each student a jingle bell after the movie. Oriental Trading had the best back with a variety of sizes!

I can't wait to see the children's faces!

During our social studies time we have been learning all about holidays from all around the world. We have been using this flip book to gather the new information we learn.

Click the pictures to grab the freebie!

This week I am having my students pick which holiday they liked best and each student will create these  poster!

They are HUGE! I love how it gives lots of room for words and pictures. Click this link to see them on Oriental Trading's Website.

I also love these gift bags from them for my student gifts!

This year my kiddos are getting these books and pencil toppers

Oriental Trading has been such a BIG help this month.I just love sharing all these ideas with my teacher friends and co-workers.  Make sure you check them out for more crafts, decorations and cheer!

 I am already planning some fun winter activities from them too!

Feel free to pin this image to save the ideas you see here today.