Extra-engaging activities, added classroom incentives, a trip around the world....can you guess what type of year I’m talking about?! I survived my first “week before winter break” as an official teacher and I’m so happy I have passed that milestone in the year-phew. While the buzzing excitement of winter break approaching (by students AND staff) made it hard to stay focused, I came prepared with a couple things up my sleeve that helped our week go by quickly and that were lots of fun!
Thankfully, my team already planned a “Holidays Around the World” unit for social studies. Each of our firsties got to travel to 5 different countries (one in each of our classrooms). They all got a paper suitcase to carry all of the crafts they made at each country, and they also got their own personal passports to carry around with them and get stamped!
The country I taught about was Holland. We had so much fun using google maps to see where our “plane” traveled and exploring what Holland looks like from an aerial view! I found a great “Holidays Around the World” TPT resource by Traci Clausen, which is where I found the wooden shoe craft and pulled some of my lesson materials from. She has a great resource with many other countries included in the packet-you can find it here! While it was a super engaging way to teach first graders about families and traditions in other countries, it was also nice for me as a teacher to get to know other first grader’s in my hallway by getting to teach them a lesson! I’ve noticed it definitely helps when I need to give those friendly reminders of expected behaviors! 
Once I noticed how well my students received the Holidays Around the World unit, I figured I would keep up the themed teaching and let my students participate in some activities they normally wouldn’t. Since my team was already planning to make gingerbread houses with their students, I decided to roll with that theme! We got to explore creating different types of shelters through making our own gingerbread houses- how cute!
We also did some comparing and contrasting of gingerbread books, and my favorite- participated in a Gingerbread Coding activity (thanks to Teach Outside the Box)! Since I knew I would be introducing code.org to my class in the new year, I thought a paper coding activity would be a great way for my students to become familiar with what coding is! They had a blast with creating their own game boards and coding their way to the finish line.
Finally, we were able to make hot chocolate in our classroom as a way to practice our "How-To" writing! We kept track of each step as a class, and then my students wrote their own booklet in the shape of a mug! Find it *here* in my TPT store :)
Although my students were very engaged and excited in some of the extra things we did leading up to winter break, it wasn’t without its challenges! I did find one bribe, however, that I think I’ll be continuing year after year…. a light up scarf challenge ;) (This probably would only be exciting to lower el… but I’m telling you, it worked like a charm!) We use Class Dojo in our classroom, and each student has a goal of getting at least 3 dojo points per day. On the last day before winter break, I told my students that if they all reached their goal by the end of the day, I’d wear a light up scarf. Wow- I had never seen them so motivated! We finished our day with the overhead lights off, my light-up scarf on, and a story on the carpet. It was such a fun way to enjoy the last bit of time I had with my students before our break!
While it was surprisingly hard to be away from my kiddos for almost two weeks, Brandon and I enjoyed having some extra time to explore our new home and celebrate our first anniversary!
Hiking Poo Poo Point 
We traveled to Victoria, BC for our anniversary.
New Year's Eve in Seattle!
