Eleves and all things Merry

 It's fair to say we are in full on holiday mode at the school now.  The new thing for me this year was the discovery of Elf on the Shelf.  How did I not know about this?!!  Turns out this is a very old tradition.  Ms. Deanna informed me that she has an elf that goes on her Christmas Tree from when her husband was a boy and it is this Elf on the Shelf.  So imagine my surprise when one of my children came to school to tell me all about his elf at home.  The Elf sits somewhere in the house and watches you all day to make sure you are being good and then at night he fly's back to the North Pole to report to Santa on your behaviour.  While your sleeping the Elf comes back and finds a new place to sit and watch.  You can't touch the Elf or it will lose it's magic.  So, I thought we should have our own Elf at Maple Tree.  I bought three actually.  One for each campus and one for home which I didn't actually need because my daughter likes coming down to the classroom to check on him.  I am sure your hearing all about the elf .  I introduced our Elf through our yoga class by telling a story set to yoga poses and Music and we ended the class by reading the story and setting our Elf up on the shelf.  Here's the tricky thing...you can't forget to move the Elf or the jig is up.  So set a reminder on your phone!!  It is very sweet to watch the children walk up to the Elf and tell him what they want for Christmas.  I also love watching the search for him each morning.  What to do if your child touches the Elf?  Check out this Sweet Solution to see what this mom did when her daughter touched the Elf.  I also read that one mom got a note from Santa saying the elf that her son touched just made it back to the North Pole because he was so weak and had to stay in the Elf hospital for a few days to recover before he could come back to their house.  The mom said the look on her child's face made her feel bad.  I don't know I think it's good for children to respect and take rules seriously.

 Anyway, it's a sweet idea and it feels magical.  We are gearing up for more magical stuff in the weeks to come.  Our nature table is slowly making a transformation.

 The children have started making sweet snowmen thumb print gift tags.  Save them all and use them on your gifts going to family and friends.  just wait there is still so much more to come.

Metal Inset trees and snowmen

Pin Pushing Christmas trees

Don't you just love all the Merry Making?

~Ms. Michelle