Grinch Day (Week) Recap...Finally!

It is so hard to believe it is 2015!!  I know many of you went back to school today - don't hate me - we had an optional teacher workday, have a required teacher workday tomorrow, and kids come back on Wednesday.  So it will be a nice 3-day week for us, with the kids at least!  I went in for a few hours this morning and got things back in order and have some things left to do tomorrow afternoon once we get done with our morning PD.  But I'm here to recap what we did the last week before Christmas/track-out and all of our Grinch activities!  This year, I want to blog more about things we are doing in our classroom, not just the weekly Five for Friday...so I'm going to try to start off on the right foot!

We started our week off with a non-Grinch activity - wrapping presents for parents.  This year I relinquished some control and let them wrap their own presents with me walking them through the steps.  I of course had to help several of my friends and some didn't follow directions, but they got to do it and it made it so much more personal for them because of that.

After that, everything else for the week was Grinch!  We read How the Grinch Stole Christmas and did comprehension activities from my It's a Green Christmas pack.  After some whole group activities and snack, we did "Daily 5" rotations but they were all Grinch activities - comprehension, grammar, spelling, and even some fun things too.  The kids loved it!

On Monday, we tried to spell our words with green spaghetti noodles, but after the first group tried it without much success, we just gave up.  But it was a great idea - just didn't work - noodles were sticky and falling apart - just a mess.

As if we didn't read and retell this story enough - we downloaded the How the Grinch Stole Christmas app on our iPads so the kids could read, listen, and even RECORD themselves reading the book!  My classroom got so loud at one point with kids recording themselves reading the story!  Then, they could choose to listen to themselves reading the book rather than listening to the original narrator.  It was great!

We also did a little Grinch-inspired writing.  This one was about spending a day in Whoville - evidently one of my little boys has a crush on Cindy Lou Who.  And...her name was spelled correctly on the board - but that doesn't mean much evidently!

I made my shirt using my Cricut and some heat transfer vinyl.  I LOVED it!

Curtis and Chet must have gotten sick of the Grinch getting all the glory!

Grinch Day finally rolled around on Thursday.  Our school day starts at 8:15, and we started watching the movie at 8:30ish.  We watched it in 30 minute chunks with other activities in between.  Our first break we had snack - all of our green and Grinchy food!  Be prepared for picture overload of all of our Grinch food!

Who-Pudding

Grinch Punch (w/o sherbert) just Diet Sierra Mist and Green Hawaiian Punch

During our second movie break, we made Grinch Dust.   Just sugar, green food coloring, in a ziploc bag and the kids kneaded their sugar until they got it the color they wanted.  I stapled on a cute little tag and they were ready to go!

After our second break, we watched the rest of the movie and then compared the movie and the book with a Venn Diagram - time to be quiet and chill...I wish.  Off they went to Health, then we had lunch from Chick-Fil-A, then they went to Spanish (specials).  I finished filling their Grinch Bags while they were in specials - filled with Grinch Dust, extra candy, Grinch Day ornament, and their Christmas present (book).  Check out their Whoville drawings posted above their Grinch bags!  They had so much fun doing these.

After they came back from specials, we did our book exchange.  And because of how my kids acted during this book exchange and how our afternoon ended, that's all I'm going to say about that!

Our Friday was an early release, so we just tried to make it until 11:30!  Then it was time for track-out!  I told myself that Friday that I was NOT going to miss my kids and I needed a break from them because of how they had acted those last couple days...but I am missing them some, I have to admit!  I'm looking forward to the pre-December, more-well-behaved, children that I used to have!