Five Little Elves

First, I have to start by admitting something.....

I am not doing Elf on the Shelf in my classroom! {insert shocked emoji face here}

But wait.... don't leave yet....

I won't bore you to the reasons I am not/can't doing that magical elf fun.... BUT I am doing some other elf shenanigans... that would be a great add on to all of you who are having some magical elf-ness in your classrooms!!!

So I wanted to link up with Michelle at Apples and ABC's and Mel D. at Seusstastic for their Elf in the Classroom Linky!

We are reading a poem, "Five Little Elves!"

Back in October we did quite a bit with the "Five Little Pumpkins" poem.... I don't know who the author is, but you know, the famous one where the pumpkins roll out of sight at the end!

It was such a hit that I decided to write my own version with elves for December.

It was an all week affair:


Monday:  We had a color version in the pocket chart {that I will make into a book for a classroom library as soon as it comes out of the chart}

Tuesday: The kids put it in their reading and poetry journals

Wednesday: Reviewed the poem and had the kids in groups of five take on the roll of an elf. They used these cards {first - fifth}

to place themselves in the correct order and retell the poem as a group. {Common Core Standards: RL.K.2 and RL.1.2}

I also introduced a game for early finishers where they can match the ordinal word cards {that they had already used above with the ordinal numeral and a picture card - sample shown below}

Thursday and Friday: They worked on their own mini book of this elf poem.

Usually I don't double up and have them make a book out of a poem already in their reading and poetry books BUT I may change that plan because they were so comfortable with it by the end of the week that I had some confident little readers.

Check out these aggressive snowflakes!

I made two versions of the mini book: one with speech bubbles and one without and this time gave half the class each one.

But look at this.....

Those that didn't have the bubbles were making their own!

I think because I had spent a while talking to them about why there were speech bubbles in my color book they first saw on Monday. In fact, it was an awesome mini lesson of how the text matches the pictures which is both a kinder and first grade Common Core Standard {RL.K.7 and RL.1.7}

And although quotation marks don't show up in the standards until 3rd grade we had a little chat about that too!

All of this {plus a little more I didn't share}  is available in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. Just click HERE

AND it is only $1.00 all day today.... in honor of the Target Dollar Spot that I will probably be in at some point today!

So thank you for reading my elf post that isn't "on a shelf"....

If you want to read more elf antics... stop by Apples and ABC's or Seustastic!

P.S. This is the last day to enter this giveaway... in case you haven't heard... it is an EVERYONE wins style giveaway... meaning if you follow the directions you will get ALL of these goodies... not just one lucky winner... but YOU TOO! It ends today {December 8th] so click HERE to go to I'm Lovin Lit to read and ENTER! And I am part of Prize Pack a