3rd Grade gets Grinchy....without a camera!?!?

It's the most wonderful time of the year!!  And no, it is not summer break!  I actually enjoy Christmas break a LOT more than summer break, for quite a few reasons:

1.  I only need about 2 weeks to regenerate....2 months leads to boredom and unnecessary spending.

2.  Time with family

3.  My husband is off work for a few days

4.  Fun dresses for parties

5.  Pea Coats

6.  Presents:  hubby's birthday, our anniversary, and Christmas

7.  The crazy chance that there COULD MAYBE be a dusting of snow

Need I say more?  Christmas break is just my favorite!  

Over the past couple of weeks I have been doing a lot of super fun different Christmas activities from my classroom, and unfortunately, have not had a camera to capture every moment...blah.  That being said, here is the recap of Christmas in 3rd grade using pictures from the actual creators of the ideas!  Click the link below each picture to visit the website from where I got my idea!

Grinch Day!!

I decided this year to give "Grinch Day" a try, and it actually ended up being more of "Grinch Week".  I had to spread out the activities so that I could spend an adequate amount of time on each one!

Math-3rd grade is currently working on multi-step problem solving (I know you feel my pain here...), and it is so hard!! I chose to use a homemade powerpoint using Grinch themed questions and images to help motivate.  The kids thought it was a hoot!  

Reading-  We started out with a lesson on character traits, and I took this idea from Teaching in High Heels. First, you read aloud the book How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and then you work as a class to come up with character traits to describe the Grinch.  In the idea online, she used adjectives:

http://teachinginhighheels.blogspot.com/

The next day, we had a mini-lesson on similes and metaphors from the song "You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch".  LOVED this activity!!  That song is full of metaphors, with a few similes too!  The students had a paper copy with the lyrics from the song, and had to highlight the similes and metaphors in two different colors of highlighters.  Then, each kids wrote an acrostic poem using the letters GRINCH, and writing similes to make up the poem.  They had a great time with this, too!  We also made paper grinches to go along with the poem.  In case you need a refresher:

On the last day of school, we had Grinch punch, which is just sprite, vanilla ice cream, food coloring, and some green sprinkles, and also we made Christmas trees from Whoville, which were sugar cones, white icing, made green with food coloring, and small candies for the ornaments.  We enjoyed all of this while watching the cartoon version of the movie.

idea from:  Kids Creative Chaos

idea from:  Taste of Home

We also spent some time doing holiday writing, using apple cinnamon ornaments and The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg as inspiration.  The kids always enjoy these activities.  To visit my post about apple cinnamon ornaments, click HERE. To see my polar express writing unit on TPT, click HERE.

HO HO HO!  Merry Christmas!  I hope you all enjoy the Holidays as much as I will!