Delegating = one happy teacher

It's moments like these that I wish I could post pictures of my students. The pure joy of holiday festivities, decorating, singing, making cookies makes me happy...oh the Christmas bliss. Thursday was our 1st grade Christmas party. This was the first time that I ever tried having the parents run the show, so I approached the event with much anticipation. With four different stations (book making, making words, ornaments, and cookie making), the 15 minute attention span of my students continually hit the "refresh" button. Since the parents were leading each station, I just got to take a back seat and enjoy the party. I felt like a parent looking over the festivities of my child, yet I was the one really running the show! This whole planning ahead and then kicking back thing is definitely how I will be doing parties in the future. Much like a bride should just enjoy her wedding day instead of running around with final details....a teacher should just enjoy the merriment of a party at the actual party.

Cookie Making:
"Oooo....it's sticky!" "Rudolph's legs fell off!" "Can I eat this white stuff?" These were all the most adorable comments I heard coming from this station. It was so cute to see their eyes light up in wonder when they made the connection between that squishy dough to the cookie they ate 5 minutes later. Interesting enough, they were not the least bit interested in all of the icing and goodies I brought to decorate. Americans...we love our sugar:)

Christmas Ornaments:

After listening to the story The Legend of the Candy Cane, the students were eager to make their own candy canes to share the story to their families. When they finished that, they had paper plate angels to symbolize the first messengers of the Christmas story.

Making Words:
"at, cat, chat, chart, charts"...just a few of the many words that could be made here with the letters s h r s t m a i c. The students had to cut up the letters (that together made the mystery word: Christmas) and make lots of little words. They loved it! Trick them into learning...a teacher's most convincing scheme ;)

Christmas Books:
The simple nature of this station reminded me of a baby who gets a new toy and only plays with the box. Basically, they are content with something not so elaborate or fancy...just simple. Put first grade students with something they can color (or a book they can re-read again later) and some crayons, and you have them occupied for quite some time!

This whole delegating thing has really had me thinking these past couple of days. Only if I had known the efficiency of this concept earlier, my life would have been much less stressful! This can only bring hope for future activities :)