Hi Friends!!
Boy oh boy were my kiddos super excited to meet our elf on the shelf! They saw the elf on the shelf box on top of my cabinet throughout the month of November, but I played dumb and acted like I had NO idea what they were talking about.
Yesterday morning, our Elf miraculously got out of his box and appeared on one of the bookshelves next to a book basket! Surprisingly, it took the kids 10 minutes to spot him. I don't know how many times they walked right by him. Finally little miss Em. saw him and the whole class erupted in utter chaos! It was good chaos though... fun excitement. They read his little poem and began to think of different names for him.
Later on in the day, our class sat down together and read the elf on the shelf book. We also brainstormed some possible names for our Elf. There were some interesting ones, but I picked my favorite, my intern picked hers, and then each child was able to do a preliminary vote for their favorite. It came down to Mr. Holly, Max, and Elfie. After a secret ballot vote and bar graph, we finally had a name! The name, Mr. Holly won by the slimmest of margins, but overall I think the class was pleased with his name.
After we voted, we had to write about it!! Our awesome elf left the kids their very own Elf Journal. I gave them a few sentence starters, and they were on their way!! They enjoyed the rest of the afternoon tweaking their first journal entries and coloring in the front covers. I think they came out adorably!
I've never seen the kids so eager to enter my room like I did today! They spotted silly Mr. Holly sitting at the bottom of the flag pole! He had a letter for them too! This elf is some writer!! I think he's got lots to say! Today we found out that Mr. Holly is 99 years old and his birthday is on Halloween... who would have thought an elf could be born on Halloween?! My kiddos were thrilled to find out this information! In fact, many of their journals today asked all different sorts of questions... maybe he'll answer some of them tomorrow. :-)
