Sunday Night!

I love Sunday night when I know I don't have to go to work the next morning! Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but I am loving being home and being on vacation. I'm staying up extra late on a Sunday night...Yippeeee!
Christmas has just begun for me. I'm amazed how quickly some people take down their trees and put away the stockings. I like to keep those stockings up just in case someone wants to slip in a little more chocolate.I have exactly three ornaments to take off the tree this year. I put up five. Five minus two...Yep that's three. What happened to two of the five? This...

She wants to be the star! If she keeps trying to eat the bulbs she just
may light up....ugh!

The day school starts anew in 2014, I'll be having a class Christmas party since ours was planned on a day that ended up as a Snow Day. There are still plenty of reminders of Christmas in my room. This was my very favorite Christmas craftivity.

 My friend Kimberly shared THIS link to make these. I cut out the silhouettes and the kids carefully laid them down on clear contact paper. Then we carefully placed scraps of different colored tissue paper onto the exposed sections of contact paper. Finally, we covered the back with another piece of contact paper and cut the paper close to the outside of the silhouette. I love the way they catch the sun and I'm thinking we'll make penguins for January using only cool colors of tissue paper.

All but  of my parent Christmas gifts made it home. I sent them home a day before our Snow Day, so they wouldn't get mixed up with all the other trimmings! These little snowmen lit up our classroom for several days before being wrapped and taken home with pride. I saw this activity somewhere on Facebook... I wish I could remember where it was to give credit.

 I cut a hole in the back of the milk jug big enough to fit a strand of 100 Christmas light bulbs through. I had the students count each bulb as they stuck it through the hole to make sure there were actually 100 lights! We used sanitizing wipes to rub off any marks on the sides of the container. To keep the cardstock paper eyes and nose on, I used scrapbook sticker adhesive.
It worked great! We were able to light them all up at the same time. I was thrilled when one of my owlets observed that we had 1,200 lights on at the same time. I miss those little owlets, but I'm looking forward to a few more days of long morning coffees and being in my PJs until noon!