Posted in Books

Santa Slept In

To pick a book for day three I searched through my collection for a book on Santa because we need to do our letters to Santa early in the month.  I ended up with Hurry Santa by Julie Sykes and Tim Warnes.

hurrysanta

I had left over paper from when my class did their letters to Santa last week so I let each of my own three pick their favourite paper.  Michael dictated his letter to me and I printed it out for him.  Eileen and Kaitlyn wrote their letters themselves.  From year to year this is always a very interesting experience to see how their writing has improved – I am always so very impressed.  Check out my post from last year to see the changes for yourself.

Michael's santa letter 3 Kaitlyn's santa letter 1

 

eileen's Santa letter 3

Posted in Books, Literacy Tuesdays

Merry Christmas Splat (& Seymour)

Last night’s book was Merry Christmas Splat.

9780060831608

In the story Splat writes his letter to Santa and then worries that he has not been good enough.  We used this as an opportunity to write our letters to Santa.  You can find many different templates online for letters to Santa.  I let the girls pick one out and printed 3 copies.  We talked about what you write in a good Santa letter.  Kaitlyn wrote hers independently, I wrote for Eileen as she dictated to me, and we tried to get something out of Michael (without too many suggestions).

Eileen's santa letter 2

Michael's santa letter

Kaitlyn's santa letter

I wanted to start something a bit different this year so I combined two ideas on interest.  I picked up some large clear plastic Christmas balls at Michaels and each child put their handprint on a ball.  I then wrote their name on the ball and the year 2012.  If you are doing this make sure to use permanent marker or it will wipe off (my scrapbooking markers wiped off too easily).  Next was the tricky part.  I folded and rolled up a copy of their letters to Santa and put it in each of their balls.  Of course we made a copy to mail to Santa as well.  All that was left was to add some ribbon so we can hang them on the tree.  I am having trouble getting a good picture of them so these will have to do for now.  Once our tree is up I will try and take better pictures with them hanging on the tree.

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