Christmas Cougar.

This has been the longest short month of my life! I thought this week would never end and it was only four days!! Our school days this month have been somewhat lacking in teaching time. We had the holiday program and party last Friday and we had extra music rehearsals every school day leading up to that. There were some days, usually Wednesdays, where I only had my kids in the classroom for a total of 30 minutes and that time was usually spent on some kind of holiday project. My kids get so excited when they see "Activity" up on the schedule. A few weeks ago one of my students said, "Another activity?! We're definitely never bored in Mrs. Lentz's class!" I loved it :)

My biggest project this month was the bulletin board in the hallway. After my frantic last minute bulletin board creation for the month of October, I immediately started planning my bulletin board project for the month of December. I had the students write about what their "gift" to our school community would be this holiday season. We talked about how our good qualities and characteristics can help to improve our community so they wrote about gifts like generosity, respect, sense of humor, kindness, friendship etc. They did really well with the assignment -- I was so proud! Then I let each of them choose colors for the "gift" that I made for the background of their writing pieces. I cut and pasted all of that, laminated it, and then attached curly ribbon to the top. Oh, and then I remembered that our headmaster really likes it when the students' pictures are up on the bulletin board. I had already put way too much time and effort into this bulletin board but decided to take pictures of each of the students holding a wrapped gift and then used the pictures to make a gift tag to hang from each gift. We used our parent gift to help decorate the bulletin board (the students made swirly ball ornaments -- swirled acrylic paint inside glass balls) and I added a little garland and a strand of battery operated lights. Can you say "overachiever"? I'm starting to think it's a dirty word.

My classroom bulletin boards were a bit lacking because of all the creative energy that had been siphoned out of me and into the hallway bulletin board. For the board over the computer center I printed out large pictures of Christmas ornaments. The students cut and colored them and then wrote one of their favorite holiday memories on the back. My favorite part of this board was getting to plug the lights in every morning -- I loved having Christmas lights in my room!

The hanging bulletin boards were decorated with tissue paper wreaths. I remember making these in my 3rd grade class and really enjoying it. I was worried it would require a little too much patience from the kiddos but they all managed it just fine.

And here's our obnoxiously large school mascot -- scares the heck out of me from time to time when it's still dark out in the mornings. I was hoping he would get a little Christmas decoration and was quite pleased when I saw this ginormous hat get pulled out of storage.

And here's the salad I made for our potluck at school. I got the idea from an e-mail that Icon Grill sent out a while ago. They had a holiday wreath salad that was very pretty but I'm sure mine tasted better since I didn't use tomatoes to add red to my salad.

Remember how I work next to a zoo? They brought a reindeer down to greet our guests at the holiday program. Apparently last year lone of the reindeer was just a baby and they had him walk across the stage during the performance. I want to see a baby reindeer!!!

Heather and I used the Holiday Program as an excuse to get our nails done. $25 mani-pedis -- and they looked great! We both got sparkly red and our fingers and toes were feeling very festive.

The Holiday Program was quite the production. The kids did really well. There were little goofs here and there and I forgot to close the curtains once and that was awkward and embarrassing -- I shrugged it off later by saying that a) my mom was in the audience and I didn't want her to feel like her kid was the only one not doing some cute little mess-up and b) I can't let the kids get all the laughs! But I was secretly really embarrassed and worried that the headmaster was going to say something to me. Mostly the day was just an excuse to get all fancy and dressed up.

Lucky for me, my mom even took pictures at the Holiday Program! Here I am singing the school song AND helping the children to all sway the same direction during the last song. Unfortunately, our music teacher was telling them to sway opposite of me... the whole point of me being there was so that she could keep her hands on the piano.

I went really easy on the kids this week. They're all super excited for the holiday break so I've tried to keep things light and fun. They brought me some nice gifts including a $50 gift card to the Triple Door and a St. John Signature fragrance perfume/lotion box gift. And, or course, lots of chocolate. Phew. I'm glad it's all done. We're nearly halfway through the year -- wahoo! I hope this break lasts forever.