Teacher’s Brain

Pirate Themed Escape Room | Team Building | Comprehension

Are you ready to be the most memorable teacher of a child’s life? Use these step-by-step instructions to guarantee student engagement while they practice comprehension skills to solve a classroom mystery. With little prep, your students will work as a team to break into a box, which breaks them out of the classroom as they beat the clock!

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Ugly Christmas Sweaters For Elementary

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Christmas trees, tinsel, ornaments, and my favorite trend, ugly Christmas sweaters! 

These are becoming more and more popular every year and I always loved it when my students would wear their own to school. Nothing brings the holiday spirit to school quite like a garish holiday sweater. The students think it’s hilarious! 

As any teacher knows, when we include things students love in our lesson plans, engagement in classwork goes up. That being said, I knew it would be perfect if I combined that love of Ugly Christmas sweaters with learning.

So I created this Ugly Christmas Sweater Writing Activity! 

ugly christmas sweater

This activity is guaranteed to be a huge hit at Christmas time. Students get to design their very own ugly Christmas sweaters. They get to let their silliness and creativity fly with this creative activity which always brings lots of smiles and giggles. 

This activity is completely digital. Which makes it so easy to do! Students can complete it at school on their computers or at home while distance learning. These interactive Google Slides are editable so you and your students can customize it however you like. 

ugly christmas sweater

Once they are ready to design, just copy and paste the movable parts to create their sweater. It comes with 14 backgrounds to choose from. 

After that, use the 6 included slides to allow students to brainstorm, organize their thoughts, and write a story about their Christmas sweater. This can be a narrative, persuasive, or opinion paper about their sweater. 

ugly christmas sweater

You can even make it extra fun by organizing a vote to pick the ugliest Christmas sweater! 

If you don’t have the ability to do this activity digitally with your students, don’t worry. It comes with a print version so you can easily adapt it to your needs. 

Check it out here! 

Do you love ugly Christmas sweaters? Let me know in the comments! 

ugly christmas sweater


 

Christmas Ornament Craft and Door Decorating

Are you looking for some simple activities to help your classroom get into the holiday spirit? Use these worksheets to design a door to show Santa on Vacation, make a decorative wall, window, or bulletin board display. Students will create their own Christmas bulbs and write to a prompt.

Christmas Ornaments

First, grab this adorable free printable for students to design their own personalized ornament. Add any art tools with the printable ornaments to make a literacy center. Students will create their own ornament. Included in this download are primary and intermediate writing prompts. Students will write about working for an ornament company with the task of designing an ornament that captures the holiday spirit. Combine the writing with the ornament for a fantastic wall display.

Christmas Ornament Center

Door Decorating

Door decorations are a must in our schools during the holidays. We always scramble to find something amazing yet, easy to create due to the busy nature of the holidays. I won a door decorating contest. It is always exciting if there is a cash prize involved!

Here is a simple door decoration with Santa “Gone To The Beach” on a well-deserved vacation. The free ornaments used on the palm tree add that extra holiday touch.

Gone To The Beach Santa Door

Door Decor Steps

Print out the Santa clothes, color them, and use a string to hang the clothes with clothespins. Add some sand dollars for that extra beach feeling.  This door decoration includes palm tree parts and the beach sign.

Grab the free Christmas ornament center below.

Christmas Bulb Free Craft

Christmas Ornament Design

You can grab the easy-to-use Santa’s Gone to the Beach Door Decor resource HERE.

Holiday Door Decorations for School

Want to look at some more holiday doors? Check out this blog post!

Classroom Jobs EDITABLE Chart Cards

Get your students motivated to help in the classroom with these visual job cards! Primary or Intermediate options to create a wall chart to easily rotate jobs. It’s even editable!

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