Gingerbread Houses

Each year in my classroom, we build gingerbread houses. This year we were able to visit a local museum, The Philbrook, to view the gingerbread houses built by local groups. My students received lots of ideas for making their own gingerbread houses. This project is a lot of work, but it is such a fun tradition. To get ready for the project, I send out a letter telling parents that we will need lots of graham crackers, frosting and candy with which to build our houses. Each student brings a can of frosting to use as glue. Then we share all of the candy they bring, and they always bring a ton of it.

To prepare for our project, we collect milk cartons from the cafeteria and rinse them out. After they have dried, we tape the tops closed and tape two together to make a wider house. A few years ago I discovered that it was much easier to hot glue the graham crackers to the milk carton prior to the project. That way the kids don't have to wait for the frosting to set to begin decorating. We also get pizza boxes donated by local pizza places. I cut the top off and cover it with aluminum foil. Then that sits inside the bottom of the pizza box. We always have lots of parents and grandparents who come to help. This project has become one of my favorite holiday classroom traditions. 

Christmas Tree Book Reports

Since I am enjoying Christmas Break, I though I would share some of my favorite Christmas related activities. Each month, I assign my students a book report on a different genre. My favorite book report of the year is November's. Students are required to read a realistic fiction book and create a tree to share the book with the class. I developed this book report about five years ago, and they get better every year. In the directions I instruct students to create a tree on poster board. They can draw, paint, cut paper, or use three-dimensional items to build their tree. Then they have to create 10 ornaments to depict important scenes, characters, settings, symbols or important objects related to the story. I explain to my students that we should be able to get a sense of what the story is about by looking at the tree. Below are a few of my favorites over the years.

Welcome to my little blog!

Greetings from the great state of Oklahoma! I have been blog-hopping over the past few months and decided to give it a try myself.  I have found so many great ideas for use in my classroom by looking into other teachers' classrooms. I want to share some of my ideas and showcase my terrific kids. Hopefully, you will find some useful ideas for your classroom.  In this picture we are celebrating Polar Express day, so we all wore our PJs to school.