Snowman Ornaments & December Happenings

Hi Friends!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday surrounded by everything they love.
For me that meant my husband, my family, Georgie Girl, good food and wine, and games!
And lots of fun times with friends while we’re on break!

We had so much fun in 2nd grade leading up to Christmas Break!  The good news is that I took a TON of pictures.  The bad news is that most of those pictures were of their adorable faces, and therefore not blog approved.  I did manage to sneak a few sans faces though!

Hadar posted this adorable Name Tree Craftivity right before Christmas Break.  I loved it, but I thought it was a little to young for my 2nd Graders, so I used her idea as inspiration for our “Odd and Even Trees”

Click the picture to head to Miss Kindergarten’s blog to see her post and get the stars for free!

I had my kids randomly draw an odd or even number.  If they drew an even number, they used the directions on the projector to make your standard looking Christmas tree.  If they drew an odd number they used the directions to create an odd looking tree.  They LOVED this activity!

Wish this picture was more clear!

I   Our awesome ESL teacher also read “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”.  She did such a great job…the kids were in a trance while she read. 

Thanks Maria!

Afterwards, students wrote what they would do to make the Grinch grin.  {No pictures, sorry!}

The next day, we watched the cartoon version movie, and drank Grinch Floats {lime sherbet and Sprite}.

The Thursday before break, we arrived in The North Pole on our Christmas Trip Around the World.  We celebrated by watching The Polar Express and drinking hot chocolate in our PJs.



Right before our North Pole Party we hosted our first ever Mug Exchange!  Students brought in a wrapped mug and swapped with their friends!  In the past we did a book exchange Pollyana for our holiday party, but I liked the Mug Exchange much more, for a a few reasons:

* Mugs generally cost less than most books
*In the past, I had many students receive books that were well above, or well below, their reading level {even though we sent home suggestions}.  They were great books, just not great for them!  Mugs are pretty universal!
*They’ll hold on to their mugs for a loooong time, and have such a fun memory associated with it!  I love that!

We’ll definitely do the mug exchange again!

A few days before Christmas Break, we made Salt Dough Snowmen Ornaments for our parent gifts.  This is the second year we’ve made them.  We teachers were older and wiser this year, and we were so excited about how these little guys turned out this time!!

Love how they each have their own personality!

We use the recipe and directions from Kaboose but we’ve altered it a little bit.  I know Christmas has come and gone, but these would be great to Pin for next year, or for a snowman unit in January!

Grab our directions below:

Click here to grab the file.

Painting our noses!

The final product.

Tips & Tricks for Success:

*Let noses and faces dry separately {last year, we made the face and nose out of salt dough and let it dry together.  It was EXTREMELY hard for our 2nd graders to paint the noses orange, and faces white when they were attached  It looked veryyyyy sloppy.}
*Set up an area with orange paint, and an area with white paint.  {I had half of my students paint their faces white at their desks and half paint their noses orange at the back table with me…then switch}.  This meant we didn’t have to wash paintbrushes in between, and orange and white stayed separate!
*Use black sharpie for the faces.  Painting details that small is really, really hard for little hands!
*Give students creative freedom. You can’t see it here, but we had snowmenwomen with eyelashes and lips, and they were pretty darn cute.
*DON’T use acrylic sealer…it will cause the sharpies to bleed.

I hope all this December fun was inspirational for you for next year!  Pin it so you don’t forget!

I’ll be back later this week with Giveaway news and a few new products I’ve been working on!

Keep on enjoying this wonderful break we SO DESERVE!!!!

~Halle