Anticipation Builds - Holiday Season

The holiday season in elementary school (the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas break) is, in my opinion, one of the hardest times of the year to be a teacher. Even in a school where many of my students will not be seeing the gifts they are hoping for underneath the Christmas tree - if they are lucky enough to have a Christmas tree, students are buzzing with excitement about Christmas. The students know that Christmas is coming and it is hard for them to contain their excitement. They know that soon they will be having a break from school.

The students' pent up excitement makes it even harder for them to concentrate on the topics at hand and even causes them to struggle with simple tasks, such as staying in their seats.

I try hard to not be the "Grinch" for my students, but I do walk a fine line between trying to push the students in their learning and still allowing them to be excited about this great time of year. We cannot afford to spend entire weeks making Christmas cards for mom and dad and writing letters to Santa about what we want for Christmas (although, I think the ELA teachers try to work these topics into the curriculum). I feel my students are too far behind to lose more educational days to just have fun. I remember when I was school... I didn't expect to do much the week before Christmas break. My students, on the other hand, will be learning about the Earth's rotation and revolution tomorrow and the effects they have on day/night and the seasons.

My students' will be having a "holiday party" on Friday. They will be watching the movie of one of the books they ready in ELA the first half of the year in the morning and then playing board games and/or Nintendo Wii in the afternoon (my students' love when I bring the Wii in for them to use). They are really looking forward to the holiday party and have been asking me questions about it daily since the first day back after Thanksgiving... haha

On a different note.
My school had "Plug Into the Outdoors" this Saturday. It was an environmental event (our school is an environmental science magnet school). The event went really well and was attended by a lot of the families from the community. Here is a link to the story that Fox News did about the event!