"Easy" Classroom Christmas Party

It's that time of the year!!!! Christmas!!! Easily, my all-time favorite holiday and I love sharing fun things to do with the classes. But, with all the stress of it being report card time and trying to make magic happen for my own family, the classroom is one more stress factor that many women don't need. Over the years, my team has perfected the "Easy Classroom Christmas Party."

Morning: Begin the morning with opening Christmas presents. (See below for how I do this cheap!) Then, allow the kids to bring games & play in the classroom.


Middle of the Day: Gingerbread Houses. This is the hardest part, but can be managed on your own if you lack parent volunteers. I set up during our planning time, have the kids come back and give instructions before they're allowed near the tables. On each table I have: a plastic tablecloth to make clean up easy; bowls of candy all mixed together; 1 plate per child holding the following: 2 milk cartons taped together, 4 unbroken Graham cracker sheets, 2 half Graham Cracker sheets; 1 spoon per child. As they come in, I give them the frosting container they brought in and tell to pick a spot. They use the frosting to "glue" the Graham crackers to the milk cartons to make the house. Then, they use the frosting to glue candy decorations to the house. When done, they're given a piece of tape with their name on it to stick to the bottom of the plate. Carefully, place the whole plate & house in cookie platter bags and tie them up  nice and pretty to go home. Once done, clean up and start the movie.

Lunch Until End of the Day: In the classroom with a movie. Polar Express is always a favorite movie, but my kids have seen it a million times (every year in elementary school), so they get bored quickly. For that reason, I'll show A Christmas Carol. It's rated PG, which means I have to get parent permission, but it's really good and one the kids haven't really seen. If we still have time, I break out the old Christmas TV specials: Rudolph, Frosty, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, etc. This is when I get out the hot chocolate that was in their Christmas stockings.




Christmas Presents

I order stockings through Dollar Tree ($1 per stocking, but I've also used lunch bag sized goody bags from Wal-Mart) and fill it with books from Scholastic and Dollar Tree items: pencils, erasers, stickers, stamps, coloring books if I can find them less than $1 each. I also include a baggie of "Snowman Soup" - hot chocolate, marshmallows, and a candy cane. I pick up a bag of Styrofoam cups and they use hot water from our classroom sink to make their hot chocolate. The candy cane is used to stir it. And finally, throw a homework pass and/or extra credit pass in there. Free for you and worth its weight in gold to them!

Gingerbread Houses Materials List

• Plastic Table Clothes - 1 per table students will be working at.
• Cookie Platter Bags - Can be bought at Dollar Tree - 1 per child
• Plates - 1 per child
• Spoons - 1 per child
• Bowls - 1-4 per table, depending on the size of the bowl

      Have Students Bring In

• Everyone brings in 1 can of frosting (cream cheese is thickest and works best. Whipped frosting is too thin and everything slides apart) If in a pinch, I've had kids share frosting by putting a glob on a plate or bowl.
• Students with Last Names Beginning A-F: Plain Graham Crackers (or about one-fourth of your class)
• Everyone Else: Bags candy or another item (pretzels, etc) to decorate the houses

"Not-a-Halloween" Halloween Party

Over the years, I've had students that can't participate in Halloween parities. And yet, at my school, we have a costume parade every year (technically, a storybook parade, but it's held on Halloween...every year...and the kids wear their Halloween costumes). So, the rest of the parents sort of expect some sort of Halloween party. I've managed to come up with a solution for all of my students.

Pumpkin Math

We first read How many Seeds in a Pumpkin? Be warned, pre-read the book. The end of the book gives away a little too much information to make determining your own seeds an actual guess.

Then, we break open the math with this activity I found on Teachers Pay Teachers. I wish I had thought of it, but all credit has to go to All4Math. My students thoroughly enjoyed working through the packet this year. We took her ideas and created a large chart of our data.

This will easily take up most of your day - if not all of it. I had to start it a day early last year so we could finish and even then it was tight. The kids love it because it involves pumpkins, but since you're not actually carving jack-o-lanterns, most families will be fine with the seasonal activity.

Movie Time

After lunch, as the students are starting to get trick-or-treating on their brains, I break out whatever treats we have (I usually make cupcakes and put 3 Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans on top - those are fun to watch!) and The Wizard of Oz. Strange as it seems, many students have never seen this movie. I guess it's because it's considered old compared to all the newer movies out there.

Rounding - Sets 7.1-7.4 {Math Ladders Bundle}

My Facebook feed has been blowing up this last week with two things: northerners going back to school and Hurricane Dorian. We went back three weeks ago, but given that we live in FL, a mini "vacation" has been the result of this storm that can't make up his mind where he's headed. Being cooped up in the house has been boring, to say the least. So, with my limited options (Super Mario Bros or Roller Coaster Tycoon), I chose to work on a product my students will be able to use when we get back later this week.

After our first unit, I saw that, as usual, many struggle with rounding. I created these Math Ladders to all be used within my 4th grade class - even though only two hit the benchmark as written for 4th grade, 4.2 & 4.3. My struggling students need to go back to Set 7.1 and revisit rounding with 2 digit whole numbers. My higher students are ready to push forward into the world of decimals (with a place value chart hanging above my white board).

               

Converting Fractions & Decimals {Task Cards}

As I was going through my math resources gearing up for another year of 4th grade math, I realized I hadn't created a set of task cards for benchmark 4.NF.C.6.  This benchmark is one that my students, for the most part, pick up on pretty easily - as long as they have that number sense foundation.

Keeping that in mind as I created this set, I designed the first 16 cards to be easily pulled to reteach a small group with those students that hadn't mastered the skill yet. Cards 1-8 focus on converting fractions & decimals in tenths and Cards 8-16 focus on hundredths, exclusively.

Cards 17-32 are mixed for your "on level" students. I would mix in a batch of Cards 1-16 to have a set of 32 cards instead of 16.

And the final 8 cards, Cards 33-40, are challenge cards for your higher learners. These cards are all fractions with denominators other than 10 or 100 and require students to change the denominator to 100 and then make the decimal. For example, students have to convert 1/4 into 25/100 and then 0.25.

Mystery Science Labs 2

Back in college, I stumbled upon/came up with the idea of Mystery Science Labs. Ever since then, I've spent the last few days of the first week of school allowing my students the chance at their first lab.

It's great! The kids get to make some fun observations and handle objects they may or may not have ever seen before. Raccoon tails, gator claws, our live turtle (they don't get to hold/touch Donatello!), plant & animal cell samples, weird looking/smelling rocks & minerals...for many of them it's all new stuff. It's also an introduction into what we'll be learning about this year.

Better yet, I get to observe the kids. I can quickly see if the new kid is fitting in. Or if there are a couple of kids that most definitely should NOT be sitting next to each other, given the amount of horseplay/off task behavior going on. I also get a chance to gauge how well the class is at following directions and how respectful they are when handling materials. They're barely in 4th grade, but I've had groups that handled my materials so carefully and made sure everything was taken care of...and then I've had the flip side of that.

So then, why would I create a second set? Isn't the first set working? 

Well, yes and no.

The first set is great. One of my all-time favorites is The Nose Knows....the smelling station. The kids love that one too and are eager to get to it! But, it's not even remotely related to my benchmarks. I decided to go back and create a whole new set of labs that specifically focus on the benchmarks covered in 4th grade - moon phases; rocks & minerals; and food webs - to name a few.

Now, as they go through this new set of labs, they'll also be given a preview of what is to come for the rest of the year.

If you already have my original Mystery Science Labs and are curious about this one...no worries. There are no duplicate stations between the two.

Magnificent Desolation: NASA IMAX Movie

I first saw this movie at Kennedy Space Center in the IMAX theater. It. Was. Amazing. My dad, being the biggest supporter of my classroom and a huge space nerd to boot, decided I  needed to have this for the students. After seeing the movie, who was I to argue?? It really is amazing.

We have one lonely benchmark on space exploration in Florida - SC.4.E.5.5. I like to show this movie around this time. It ties in with the Apollo missions and the what-ifs of what could have happened if things had gone wrong.

I like to pose a question to my students: Would you go to the  moon? - and then have them make a t-chart of pros & cons in their notebooks. Their final writing assignment is to make a decision...would they go to the moon? And write their thoughts based on the evidence from the movie.

This is a great way to tie writing in with the science curriculum - and I'm talking about writing that will actually  help them prepare for the 4th grade FSA Writing test. (And if you hang these in the hallway you'll look really good when your principal takes a peek at the writing expectations of your science class!)

Owl Pellets

So, you want to jump into the world of owl pellets! This is not meant to be a comprehensive unit designed to get your class ready for a test.

This is a fun project for the end of the school year – after testing is over, but before you’re allowed to start showing movies and having all day recess. You know the days….the grade book is closed…you’re working on make up work…and administration still wants you to be doing something academic.

Student engagement usually dwindles down to an all-time low (especially if you’re busy chasing down missing assignments or having kids redo work), but dissecting owl pellets in my room almost always guarantees I have 100% participation. Even from the kids that never want to participate.

The most practical thing about this unit, from a teacher's point of view, is how little you HAVE to be involved. You'll need to give instructions, obviously, but since you've taught students how to find the physical properties of matter (mass, measurement, etc), you don't have to stand over them as they do this. When it comes to opening the pellet, I start out with a video so the students get background on exactly what a pellet is and how it's formed. (This is a good one from You Tube,  if you decide not to order the DVDs.)

You may consider writing a grant through Donors Choose, especially to get the DVD and posters. In the past, I’ve had students bring in a couple of dollars for their pellets, but I’ve found that writing a Donors Choose grant to pay for the grade level makes it easier to guarantee that everyone gets to participate.