Gingerbread stories and decorating for Christmas

Good evening!

I hope that everyone has had a restful and wonderful weekend. I wanted to share with you some of the awesome activities we did this week involving the gingerbread stories. This week we were focusing on the CCSS of parts of a story: characters, setting, major events (problem and solution).

We created a parts of a story anchor chart using The Gingerbread Man, compared and contrast The Gingerbread Girl and Boy books, wrote our own gingerbread stories, and voted on our favorite gingerbread story. 

I wish I thought to take a picture of the anchor chart and my student writing in their reading response journals. They really rocked it this week with the gingerbread stories. We used the writing prompt if I were a gingerbread... and they filled in man, girl, boy, or baby. The stories came out super cute!

Our classes favorite gingerbread story was a tie between The Gingerbread Girl and The Gingerbread Baby. My students of course loved these stories because the gingerbread cookies get away! One little boy mentioned that in all the man or boy stories we read the gingerbread cookies were eaten but the girl and the baby were smarter. I'm glad he catches on that girls think a little more ;) just kidding guys-chill.

Sadly this week we said goodbye to our principal. As a school family we made this past week very special for her and on Friday we had her retirement party. This was one of the gifts that my co-worker made. It has all of the staff's fingerprints with their names written inside. It was bittersweet to see her go...now we are just hoping that the new principal that comes in January can halfway fill her shoes.

This weekend I decorated for Christmas at my house. It was so fun picking out the tree (in the middle of the SEC championship game-come on that was an awesome game football fans!) and decorating after the game was over. As we were decorating I picked out this wonderful ornament my class made me last year with all their thumbprints and initials and it said love your little pirates because I had a pirate theme last year. I thought back on what a great class they all were and what an awesome year we had together. Then later on I broke the ornament into a million little pieces. I was so upset I cried. They were my first class to make me a gift all together like that and they were my kids. I can't explain it well but I'm sure you'll understand. My fiancé picked up the pieces while I wiped away my tears. He put it all off to the side so he could make a new ornament for me and put the pieces inside. He is so thoughtful! We had a delightful time decorating and getting in the Christmas spirit this weekend.

Hope you have a productive week in school and remember: