Although we've done lots of outreach in the schools, this was our first opportunity to plan the special day ourselves. Actually we weren't sure we were supposed to be planning it, but as the big day drew closer we realized we were in charge of planning the lessons. At least we were prepared. We had already been talking about things we could do so we just really had to get it written on paper for the other teachers and buy the supplies. We had a station about The Gift of the Magi, a caroling station, the cookie house station, a game station, and a re-writing of The Twelve Days of Christmas station. Rusty and I did the caroling and The Gift of the Magi, and those classes gave us a lot of opportunities to share the true meaning of Christmas.
Rusty thought it would be really cool if we could have one station where the students could build gingerbread houses. That set things is motion. I decided it wasn't feasible for me to make enough gingerbread for 100 students to build houses so I went to town in search of cookies. Then Rusty and I constructed one at home to see if it would work. It's always best to test things first--that's my gold personality I guess.
You can tell from my picture that ours turned out pretty traditional looking. It's not that great because we used the broken cookies from the packages to save the good ones for the students. Once I found out it could be done, I got to go back to the store to buy enough for 50 houses. We decided the students would work in pairs to build the house--not too many people per group so everyone could have a hands-on experience.
Buying all of the supplies was no easy task, but I'm thankful for Makro! Makro is a buy in bulk store, and I was able to buy huge tins of cookies. Then Pawn and I divided all of the cookies into individual bags so that each pair would have the same amount of building materials.
We originally thought that I would be at the cookie house station, but I think the teacher really did not want to teach the reading lesson. So we switched places, and I think it turned out better. I probably would have instructed the students on how to build the houses, and we would have had a bunch of cookie-cutter houses. We didn't even show them a picture of ours. We just gave them the materials and the icing. As you can tell from the pics no two houses were the same. They looked wonderful and it was the favorite station among the students.
At the end of the day, we were all assembling in the big room for the closing ceremonies, and the teachers decided that they wanted to pick the "winning" cookie house for a special award. The teachers couldn't decide on which house was the best so they asked me to choose. That was a difficult position to be put in. I had teachers hanging on my arms advocating for the one they thought was the best. :) We finally decided on one. I hope I'm not the one who decided, but I'm not really sure how the winner was chosen.
We ended the day with a group photo. We had a great group of students, and the teachers were happy with the day. And I now have lesson and game ideas in case we do this again.
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