Childhood memories are coming back… Snuggled up beside my mom in my feetie pajamas with my little sisters listening to my mom read us a bedtime story. Boy am I thankful for a mother that created memories of a lifetime with me growing up.
My mom used to read to me this book Sometimes It’s Turkey, Sometimes It’s Feathers to me at Thanksgiving and Bah Humbug every year at Christmas time for as long as I can remember. Of course they are some of my favorite stories, because they hold so many memories. I just have to share them each year with my students. Sometimes It’s feathers is about a little old lady who finds a turkey egg while walking through the woods and she takes it home and hatches it. The whole story leads you to believe that she will eat the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, but in the end he joins her and her pet cat to eat Thanksgiving dinner with her. Such a great story.
Bah Humbug is about a little girl who believes in Santa, but her brother doesn’t and he makes her help him set up a trap for Santa. Her brother makes her set traps to catch Santa. In the end she stays awake and meets Santa while her brother is asleep. Her brother says if she tells anybody he will smash peanut butter and jelly on her teddy bear’s new fur coat. There are also a couple of letters to Santa in the story written by the little girl. This makes a great read aloud and could follow up with a letter to Santa writing project.
And now for the freebie. I know it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet, but I was so excited to do this tiny little elf 3D on the shelf craft and writing to put on my bulletin board in the hall. Today all we got done was the craft part. The elves turned out very cute. All you need is red and white construction paper, glue, and scissors and you can make these fun little elves. My students were talking nonstop while making them about what they would name their elf. I was worried my students might have trouble cutting out the tiny elf, but they did an awesome job. If Second Graders can make this little guy than I believe anyone else can too. Not sure if it would be to hard for 1st or not. I did find out about 3 or 4 students in my classroom have an Elf on the Shelf at home.
Our real classroom Elf on the Shelf hasn’t made an appearance yet in my classroom. I think he will arrive after Thanksgiving sometime that week. Not sure if I should bring him out before or after I get evaluated that week.
You can download the templates to make these cute 3D elves on the shelves from Google Docs. It also includes a blank writing template to write an elf story. You will have to excuse my pink and blue title for the bulletin board if you look closely. Looks like our school printer was running low on some colors. I will change it next week, but wanted to see what it looked like complete.
2 Responses
Will have to check out those books-I hadn't heard of either of them, but am always on the lookout for new classics! 🙂
NotJustChild'sPlay
Thanks so much for this activity. I teach Yr 1&2 in New Zealand and we loved your elf on a shelf. All my students managed the cutting although I did the folding due to time constraints.
I had never heard of the book, but now I am going to be buying myself a copy. You can take a look at our elf on a shelf efforts (only a few up on the blog, but more to be added next week) at http://mrsgriffinscoolclass.blogspot.co.nz/