1-2-3 Come Do Some Elf On A Shelf Activities With Me
Does an elf visit your classroom during December, quietly sitting on a shelf watching your students?
"Jingle" visits ours, and since he's such a fabulous behavior modification tool, and lots of fun for my Y5s; I designed some quick, easy & fun activities, which practice a variety of standards. I'm sharing 4 of our favorites on the blog today.
To grab your students' attention, ask them, "Who wants to be an elf?" then watch the excitement and enthusiasm grow for the “Wanted: Elf Help” creative writing prompts.
Collect everyone’s page, add the cover of your choice, and you have an “awwww-dorable” class-made book.
There are 15, elf-themed pages for your kiddos to choose from.
For pre-writing, have students fill out the “My best qualities for being Santa’s helper” worksheet. There are 2 options to choose from.
They can refer to this list to write their letter to Santa, convincing him that they’d make a terrific helper.
Although students can certainly write about their real qualifications, toss out a more creative option, where students think outside the box.
To practice "point of view" have them pretend to be a “real” elf applying for the job, and go from there.
I’ve included a silly letter from Jingle, my made up elf, that you can use to help explain things, and jump start those creative juices.
I'm sure that thinking up a name for their "elf-self" will be fun.
To add to the hoopla, I’ve also included:
* 3, “I’m an official elf helper for Santa” badges
* A “Congratulations! You’re hired” certificate.
* 2, Wanted Posters to hang up to peak students’ interest and introduce the lesson.
Later, you can use them for a festive holiday bulletin board, if you want to display students’ letters before you make them into a book.
* There’s also a “We’re Qualified” poster you can use for the center of that display as well.
Because of the way I designed the pages, you can re-use the templates for other writing activities you may have throughout the month as well.
Next up is "Where's The Elf?" Part of our 2D shapes standard, is to recognize spatial directions, so I designed an emergent reader with some worksheets & 2D shape games.
You'll love the variety of skills and standards you can cover with this sweet emergent reader packed with 16 Dolch sight words.
Students read the sentence, add end punctuation, trace & write the directional word, then color, cut & glue the elf to the appropriate spot.
I've included a black & white, boy and girl elf cover options, with color copies for teachers to use for their sample.
There's an optional last page for a bit more writing.
I've also included 3 worksheets, plus two, whole-group games, to reinforce 2D shapes and spatial directions.
I love putzing with a play on words, so I came up with "Elf-abet" and designed a few elf-themed activities to help my students practice upper and lowercase letters.
The packet includes games,
* A variety of worksheets, some of which can be used as assessments.
* Upper & lowercase full-color assessment mats, with a matching black and white set to send home with struggling students.
* Plus an upper & lowercase letter assessment recording sheet.
Finally, since recognizing numbers and counting are also something we work on daily, I designed another elf-themed packet to practice those standards as well.
* Number cards from 0-130
* A 4-page tip list of all kinds of things you can do with the cards, including the “Kaboom” game
* Even & odd sorting mats
* A set of number symbol cards for more games and to show equations.
* A one - page template of 35 elf shoes & hat tiles to use as manipulatives to make groups/sets.
* 11 trace & write worksheets. The “What’s Missing?” ones can be used as an assessment tool.
* 3, “I spy a number” game worksheets, that you can use for whole-group assessing.
* You can also re-use the worksheet 6 times! There’s a full-page template, as well as 2-on-a-page to conserve paper.
* 3 bookmarks of praise.
* 14 number puzzles (black & white, plus color) that practice sequencing numbers 1-10, counting backwards from 10 to 1, plus skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s.
Speaking of numbers, the featured FREEBIE for today is a sweet "You Can Count On Rudolph" keepsake craftivity.
Students trace and write the numbered pages to make a Rudolph's nose counting booklet.
Choose to count by 1's to 20, count backwards from 10 to 0 or 20 to 0, + skip count by 2's, 3's, 5's, and 10's.
Simply fold the ends of the top of the "triangle" head down, add some hand print "antlers" & wiggle eyes, for a super-cute bulletin board display.
Well that's it for now. My mom's visiting from Wisconsin, so I have an especially fun-filled day planned.
She'll be 91 in a few weeks, and constantly on the go, so I'll try to keep up! Wishing you a safe and blessed day.
"Mothers hold their child's hand for a moment, but their hearts for a life time. " -Unknown
