The Polar Express Classroom Theme Party: A Magical Bell Student Gift Idea and Free Polar Express Tickets

Every year, my class watches The Polar Express movie on the last day before break while the teacher gets cleaned up from Christmas, organizes lessons and materials for January and all of that good stuff. We have a PJ day and the students bring a small blanket and pillow to flop out on. 

Sometimes, we go all out and have a Polar Express theme party complete with a hot cocoa bar, golden tickets, reindeer treats, crafts, sound track music and tons of fun! If you have a Polar Express Day or theme party like I usually do, you might like this easy and very special student gift idea! It's a nice keepsake of their year with you too.

I found these beautiful bell ornaments at Pier 1 for $1.00 each. 

It's a small price to pay for a really nice quality bell! 

They come with a pretty ribbon already attached. I like my class to look back at their ornament years from now and remember who gave it to them, so I always add a gift tag with my name and the year on it. 

In the past, I purchased a tub full of smaller bells and used golden metallic scrapbook paper with a different tag, but I could not locate a digital file or my master to share with you! I'm so disappointed about that and sure hope it turns up somewhere! I was out of time to try to recreate one, so this year I just went with a simple tag on festive red cardstock. It says ALWAYS BELIEVE!

This is my sample from 2012. I added a burgundy velvet ribbon and it looked very much like Santa's first gift of Christmas! My name is on the back of the tag.

I did locate my colored version of the party tickets that I hole-punched as the students entered the room and some golden gift tags to share!

 You can download them here.

If you think you might like this idea to file away for next year, or to even to give to some special BELIEVERS in your family, you can still get the bells at Pier 1. I am watching for them to go on clearance and then I will pick up a class set for next year! 

I plan to bring you more flashbacks from weeks past during my time off, so I hope to see you back again over the break.

Wishing all of you a very merry Christmas! 

Enjoy the time with your family and some well-deserved lazy days!

:)

The Polar Express Story Sequencing Giveaway

 All Aboard! The Polar Express is my absolute favorite read aloud for the holiday season. Every child I know loves it too! I'm so excited to share this new item with you!

 I've created this story sequencing activity to go along with the book. It can be used in a pocket chart, as a cut and paste sequencing project or at a literacy center for retelling.

You can enter to win a copy for your own classroom. Head on over to Teachers Notebook to enter the giveaway! 

While you are there, check out all of the amazing sales through December 2nd!

 Everything is my shop is on sale too!

I have a mile long wish list and plan to shop and save this weekend!

 Let the fun begin! :)

Christmas Projects in the Classroom and a Freebie

I hope that you all have had a good start to the week with your little ones safely in your care and excited about the holidays. I'm a little behind on my posts about holiday projects so I thought I'd show you what we've been up to these last few weeks! Maybe you can still squeeze one of these activities in this week or file some ideas away for next year!

This Dear Santa Craft was really easy to prep and make and is absolutely adorable! It's from the creative and talented Miss Kindergarten Love! It's a must have for my bulletin board every year!

We took our Santa letters through all of the steps of the writing process including peer editing. 

  This student told Santa she wanted a North Face jacket because she would look pretty good in one! Too cute!

These are our gingerbread glyphs for our massive shared board in the hall. 

This idea was shared with me by my teammate so I don't have a pattern for you. Next year I want to use white puffy paint to frost our gingerbread glyphs! I used what I had on hand. This was one of those last minute crafts!

The students wrote about their favorite magical part of The Polar Express.

 Our grade level Christmas project this year is a snowy, sparkly pine cone ornament. I just love the collection  I have of school-made ornament gifts from my child. I think the parents will like these. They were so simple to make. We used a beautiful ribbon and glued a few berries on top.

There is a small school photo of each child on the back of the tag! 

The ornaments are going home in an inexpensive treat bag from Michaels. We did not collect any money for this project this year because we had been asking for donations galore for other things! I think I only spent about ten dollars on materials.

This is my ornament to the children so they will remember our Polar Express theme party.

This was a fun freebie from Amy Lemons. We used it as a peeker over our Holiday Help 

Wanted Ads. I had the students trace the nose pattern on wrapping paper.

We read a funny poem by Timothy Tocher about Santa's reindeer growing too old to do the job and others who caused problems on the team. You can grab a copy of our Holiday Help Wanted writing page from my Dropbox. 

My students had a blast writing their want ads. They were very creative!

 Have a fun rest of the week!