How Teachers Survive Christmas | Pocketful of Primary

[Music] it is the week before winter break and for a lot of teachers that means exhaustion stress and sticky holiday parties so I decided to do a little 12 days of Christmas theme I'm really excited to do this like today with that I'm like oh I can't wait cause I think they're gonna really enjoy it now this just has good decision written all over it another thing that I love our field trips now we do not always have a field trip this time of year it just so happens that ours was scheduled for the week before winter break good morning YouTube I had a lovely weekend filled with loose end time you know all these little things but haven't had time for or I've been putting it off I just I got em all done tied up all these loose ends I wrapped presents I wrote thank-you notes I went Christmas shopping I watched home alone okay not all this ends are created equal but it is the week before winter break and for a lot of teachers that means exhaustion stress and sticky holiday parties filled with ice even candy canes and things but I'm choosing not to dwell on those things this week instead the theme for this vlog is my most favorite things about being a teacher around the holidays now one of my most favorite things is not being late so I'm gonna go ahead and head to school and I will catch up to be there [Music] one of my first favorite things about being a teacher around the holidays is Secret Santa presents are the best way to show someone how much you care it is like this tangible thing that you can point to and say hey man I love you this many dollars worth now I am part of my school's hospitality committee which means we are responsible for organizing Secret Santa for the entire staff which means I needed a really quick and easy way to do it so this year we actually used elf ster which was awesome I was lucky enough to get paired up with my old teammate from last year who is now teaching third grade and don't worry by the time as well goes up she will already know I'm your Secret Santa the Secret Santa police just you know calm down it's okay the way that Secret Santa works at our school is the last week before break you give your Secret Santa small gifts leading up to Friday and then on Friday you give them a larger gift and reveal who you are so let me show you what I got her so I decided to do a little 12 days of Christmas themed even though it's not 12 days that's five days and it's not Christmas it's a week before winter break but you know themes are just fun so I just whipped up these little taga Rooney's over the weekend and this one says on the first day of the week before winter break my Secret Santa gave to me my favorite Starbucks drink so I went and got that this morning this one says on the second day of the week before winter break my Secret Santa gave to me coffee cake Hut's to energize me her favorite ones are the Starbucks holiday blend third day says on the third day of the week before winter break my Secret Santa gave to me my favorite snack foods because teachers from time to time need to be able to eat their feelings so these are two of her favorite snack foods ruffles cheddar and sour cream and boom chicka pop next is on the fourth day of the week before when it breaks my Secret Santa gave to me my favorite grading pens aka flare pens and then on the last day of the week before when I break my secret santa gave to me a gift card to spend because everybody likes gift cards now I will be honest and say I went way over the little you know budget that they set for Secret Santa but I just don't like being constrained by my rules and things another thing I love about being a teacher around the holidays is we read festive outfits you know just spread that holiday cheer I will admit today's outfit it's a little bit on the tame side but you kind of you got to build up your festivities throughout the week okay so I have this snowman shirt now this is from Jane comm so you know what that means it means I can't like but I'm sure you could find something similar somewhere else I have my black skirt that I always wear from Amazon it's linked in like every video you know and then okay I'm not flexible enough for outfit of the day but I have these shoes okay right cute yes these are from Sears like eight years ago so good luck finding them and I have these snowflake earrings because these are just these are what dreams are made of you know who said that Hilary Duff yet another thing that I love about being a teacher around the holidays is doing fun festive activities with my students I will be honest our schedule is gonna be off Wednesday Thursday Friday so I'm trying to keep her schedule as normal as possible today and tomorrow for you know my sanity but I took the lesson for the McCook ulam that we were supposed to do today which we did metric measurement last week so today was supposed to be like you know application problem real-world and it was like a mama bear papa bear baby bear kind of situation like figuring out which chair belong to which bear didn't mean to rhyme but I'm a poet didn't know I can rhyme any time and I just saw that and I was like no like that has zero holiday cheer and we need to fix that so I kind of remade the activity with my own pizzazz you know a little pet and little zing and I am doing the case of the melted snowman I know [Music] so essentially with this activity they are trying to save a snowman family I came up with this last night at like 10 o'clock and they have to look at the different parts of the melted snowman and figure out which one belongs to which family member so there is Papa's know me hood mama snowman babies snowman [Music] so they have to figure out the length of the arms the mass of the carrots and then the capacity of like some melted water from the snowman and then they have to pair it up with each correct bears so if you are interested in this activity you know just shoot me a little email I can send it your way if you're not you won't hurt my feelings one of my other favorite things leading up to the holidays is receiving gifts from students now hear me out no I'm not that horrible of a person I'm like yes I love getting gifts to me it's not about the physical gift I just love seeing the excitement on the kids face to give me something and for them to be excited to see my reaction even if it's just a piece of paper that they made into a card like truely I love seeing that joy or you know the sneaky little kids who just sit the gift on your desk without saying anything to you because they're kind of embarrassed that's cute too now I also got my get Secret Santa gift today from my Secret Santa so this was up in my mailbox so a diet coke which is one of my favorites don't judge me and this little list pad which is from Target really really cutest as slaying it be merry and always on holiday that is adorable this was also in there from one of our staff members just kind of some little treats and goodies and I wanted to share this with you so as I start receiving gifts it can become really hectic trying to keep track of who gave you what have you written to thank you note I always try to hand write a thank-you note for every gift that I get so I just you know whipped up this little gift log last night so I can write down who it was from a description of the gift and then I can check it off when I have written the note again if you want this you know just shoot me a little email [Music] another one of my favorite things about being a teacher around the holidays is when I get to go home at the end of the day now I'm just kidding but another day is now done I had a really good day today with my students I was just feeling pumped up happy just in the holiday spirit you know and I feel like it rubbed off on my students I had good days with all of them we got stuff accomplished we worked hard and that's all I can ask for at this point so I'm gonna get out of here I need to go do some more Christmas shopping for you know some secrets Sienna some some loved ones all that good stuff and then I will catch up with you in the a.m. good morning YouTube another thing I love about Peter teach around the holidays as you can see the light at the end of the tunnel I know it sounds really bad but seriously I am very ready for a break okay like I'm gonna break so hard over this break like PJ's hot chocolate movies no homework all that kind of stuff I'm going to be taking full advantage however I like to be as productive as possible leading up to that and when I can see you know that light out there and I know that I'm in the homestretch I'm almost there I actually become more motivated to get stuff done so right now I'm pretty much caught up on everything like don't really have a whole lot to do today which makes me feel good makes me feel more relaxed and it's because yesterday super productive last night super productive and then I get to reap the benefits later on [Music] so again one of my favorite things Secret Santa and what is better than one Secret Santa but two Secret Santas so this one we did among our team so there's four fourth-grade teachers plus our ta so the five of us did a Secret Santa working exchange gifts on Friday but mine is just all ready to go cuz like I said love me some Secret Santa did all the shopping packed it on up it is ready to go so I thought I would go ahead and bring it to school I actually got my TA again she's gonna know it's me before she actually sees this so a few of the things that I got her she really likes lace jalapeno chips and then the Ferrero Rocher chocolates there also are some scented pens in there a gift card to her favorite restaurant and then this this right here is a mug with her name on it which I've never seen Rea done mugs with names on them before but I just was walking through and I was like wow fate fate exists or what things happen for a reason or whatever you want to say I believe in it because this mug had her name and it was the only one with names and that's just kind of creepy but also awesome so back to festive outfits because like I said I love me some festive outfits around the holidays I'm gonna show you today's outfit now this just has good decision written all over and I got this sweater from Target two years ago it's brown the men's department but I honestly love this I love the pattern it's for comfortable I love the fuzziness on the slots and just one of the best purchases that I made in 2016 and for being honest I got my gift from My Secret Santa today so I got another Diet Coke that is very needed this week I will be consuming that shortly and these adorable little gel clings for my window so I'm gonna go put those up right now drink my diet coke and get on with my day [Music] [Music] these chuckling has always seemed like a good idea and then just falls apart as you start putting them on the window [Music] another thing I love about this time of year is my sloth collection usually grows you know I gained some new additions to the family so as you can see I have this top little cabinet area where I store most of my sloths but they have started to spill over into the bottom so I think I'm gonna work on moving them to like the very top that way I can have them extend all the way across but you know you just you can never have too many sloths another thing that I love our field trips now we do not always have a field trip this time of year it just so happens that ours was scheduled for the week before winter break we have to split up and have two classes go on one day and two classes go on another because it's just too many kids to all go on one day so two of my team teachers are going tomorrow I am gonna have just my homeroom class with me which I'm excited about cuz you know I love them they're my friends and we're just gonna do some fun activities I will show you those tomorrow then me and one of my other team teachers are going to be going on the field trip on Thursday yay I love field trips I just think they're fun they are hectic and it's a little bit stressful but I love the experience with my students now I need to get out of here and go to the gym go home and we got some fun stuff happening tomorrow so I'm excited to show you good morning YouTube you thought was gonna say but I did I stuck it in there this morning we have a faculty meeting what you know not one of my favorite things in the world however okay around the holidays we have like festive faculty meetings so we got some snacks we got some ugly Christmas sweaters I'll show you about when I get to school we got some games some festivities I am all about that life and that is one of my favorite things about being a teacher around the holidays I love our like faculty holiday party ish type thing now we each have to provide a baby picture so let me show you mine so this is me in my element you know cute right I think we're doing some kind of like guessing game with this which I am very so I am totally all for any kind of game where I can potentially win something so I'm gonna show you today's outfit now this sweater it says oh snap you know adorable it's from Target and I just got it if by saying I just got it I mean I literally went to Target last night and got it because I was looking at my selection of sweaters and just the festiveness of them was not living up to what I envisioned in my head especially with today being the staff holiday party I was like you know what we just we need to take it up a notch so I got this sweater from Target I'm wearing the same black skirt that I were earlier in the week okay judgment-free zone and then my legs hold on okay you got a little glitch there I've got red stockings no idea where I got them from and then BAM same shoes that I wore earlier in the week because I only have like four pairs of shoes some more goodies from my Secret Santa another little diet coke which is perfect that will get me through the day and some stickers and what I really like about these are from the target dollar spot but they're not like Christmas per se they're more just like wintery so I can use these through like January and even February I feel like at least half of the things that I have shared as my you know favorite things about being a teacher leading up to the holidays have been food-related or treats or something of that sort but you know welcome to my life so we actually had like a cart like a cookie cart come around today so I was able to grab myself some cookies and I specifically saved them for after school as my you know stress relief from the day I'm gonna go ahead and enjoy these now and it's okay cuz I'm going to the gym later I mentioned to you that we were in homeroom classes all day today and I wanted to kind of talk through what activities we did so I'm gonna do a similar format to the way I talked through my math lesson last week so I'm gonna scooch on over this way and I will pop up a JPEG on the screen so you can see what the slide looked like and then I will explain the actual activity so first we did some snow globe writing now this is something that our students have been doing in their language arts classes they had to finish their final copy because they are going to assemble them on Friday so if you've never heard of this it's called trapped in a globe the students write a story about being trapped in a snow globe and then we took pictures of them outside and like their jackets and we would tell them like okay you're trapped in snow globe what's your reaction like some of them you know they're like we took their pictures it was really really cute and we're actually going to put them inside of a snow globe using a clear plastic plate and we're gonna put some faux snow on the inside and have their picture in there and it's gonna be adorable so we spent some time doing that then we did a read-aloud so this book is called after the fall and it's how Humpty Dumpty got back up again this is a newer book absolutely adorable if you haven't read it highly recommend it awesome book we did a read aloud of that discuss some questions with it then we did one of my favorite activities that we always do during the holidays in ugly sweater contest so our students each got this basic template it just has a sweater and then they put their name at the bottom and they decorated the sweater using crayons markers colored pencils pom-poms I had some like little bells that they could put on in googly eyes and all that good artsy crafty stuff and they then voted they went around the room they looked at each other's ugly sweaters and they voted for four different categories ugliest sweater cutest sweater funniest sweater and then most creative so after they voted I went through and I tallied all of them and came up with the winners I wanted to show you just a couple of them these all weren't necessarily winners but I just thought they were really creative this first one did actually win for ugliest sweaters so they just threw all kinds of stuff up on it and I just thought it was adorable I voted for this one actually for ugliest I thought that they did a really good job then there was this one this one didn't win anything but I thought it was really good so it says follow la la la la mama and I thought that that was really cute as well and then this one won for funniest and when I saw it I literally burst out laughing I thought it was so funny so Santa fell off of like his reindeer like his sleigh snapped off of the reindeer and it says ho ho no that was so cute the next activity that we did was some Chromebook time so we kind of split up the Chromebooks between me and my other team teacher that was here today so I put my students on that for about a half an hour you can see the activities that they had for in math is a math website that we use tons of awesome math activities on there that's what most of my students chose they also could go on hour of code some of them were finishing up Google classroom assignments but while they did that I was tallying up the ugly sweater contest winners I also was pulling some students to get work me up now something else I wanted to do but we actually ran out of time we were gonna do a gratitude snowball fight basically the students we're going to write down things they're grateful for on a piece of paper and crumple it up into a snowball then we're gonna have a short snowball fight pick it up and we were gonna share the things that we are grateful for I thought that was gonna be a lot fun but you know you're running out of time some time then we were also gonna do a directed Rowling so there is a YouTube channel it's called art hub for kids hopefully I said that right if not I apologize but I will lake the channel in the description it's I think a dad and a son maybe could be wrong maybe I'm assuming things but they go through and they do directed drawly so they show the students how to draw all kinds of different things and we are gonna do one for gingerbread houses but again we ran out of time however hopefully this gives you some ideas of things you can do with your students around the holidays because I know schedules are always really hectic this time of year and sometimes you just need some little filler activities just kind of you know sprinkle throughout your day when you have extra time so hopefully this gave you some ideas I'm gonna head out to the gym for the night and then I will catch up with you tomorrow good morning YouTube another thing I love about the week before winter break at least this year is field trips now typically I've never really done a field trip like the week before winter break so you know keep me in your thoughts but we're gonna go get our field trip on today we are going to Arlington EKKO which is an Outdoor Education Center we're gonna go do some activities let me tell you it's cold and it's supposed to rain so we're gonna make the most of it and it's okay I'm just gonna kind of show you some clips of throughout the day or festivities that we're doing on the field trip and then I will catch up with you at the end of the day let's go get this done [Music] [Music] he likes me we've become friends [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we survived the future we got home okay not home we got to school which feels like home sometimes based on the amount of time I spend here but we got to school around 5:30 I think it's now like 6:30 because I've been talking with my team teachers just trying to figure some stuff out for tomorrow and let me show you what my desk looks like right now I know you all have heard about the Polar Express well this is the hot mess Express I had students bringing in things for our holiday party and I just had them put it behind my desk and then I had like gifts that were brought to me this morning so I need to write thank-you notes for those and get those put away and then these are random things that were just brought to me I guess throughout the day so I need to clean up this area then I will be in a clear head space and can talk to you about the field trip [Music] now that my desk is clean I can fill you all in on our field trip today I have to say it was wonderful it was a great time I love this field trip because it's just super interactive for the students and they don't get to learn lots of awesome information now I have to say weather not ideal it was raining pretty much the entire day plus it was cold it was kind of miserable however my students were great sports about it I loved just seeing them just fully engaging in the activities and the best part the highlight of the trip so during lunch time they always have a competition because every fourth grade class in the county goes on this field trip so there is a competition to see who can get the least amount of waste from lunch now that doesn't mean like napkins and more so means like food waste so they sort it into what is compostable and what is not compostable and anything that is not compostable becomes waste so we had a competition and this happens every year and you want the least amount of waste so the two classes that went yesterday had two pounds of waste so I told my kiddos I was like okay we're shooting for goose egg you know we're shooting for zero and they were kind of like okay you know we'll see mr. a but we did it we had zero waste so we actually get our picture up on the wall which is just super exciting and I just love seeing how excited they were for themselves and like the feeling of pride and I thought that that was great now I did have to eat a kid's leftover pizza crust I also had to eat some leftover butternut squash that some kids had but you know at the time I'm like oh do I want to do this like do I want to eat this kids pizza crust but I'm happy that I did it because it you know it helped us out and it just it got us no waste and I'm just I'm feeling good now tomorrow is the last day before break so I will fill you in on all the awesome festivities we have going on in the morning I need to get out of here and head home and just rest because I'm so tired my religion and you see I see these emptiness it is the Dove day that is the other thing I love about the trust week before winter break typically my school on the last day before when a big and soon fell where their PJs he ever since from Utah fiddles a blood get we're going to move all the death today to the side of the room and then we are free to spread out the rollover floor and watching they do this afternoon so once I get to school I figured on all the best big things happening today over now [Music] speaking of pyjamas I wanted to show you my side note do you say pajamas pajamas curious let me know anyway so I have these pajamas that I got from Kohl's I got them a couple years ago sleeves are a little bit short but you know it's okay we make do they're very warm and in fact I'm sweating like they're really really hot I also have these the slippers which came from Target I got these like two years ago super cute the slippers you saw this morning were just my warm-up slippers because it's raining outside so I had to wear slippers to get to school cuz they were gonna get soaking wet and then I put on my real slippers another thing I love about the last day is our holiday party we have had parents donate all kinds of treats and goodies we've got cheese puffs we've got pretzels and then our students are gonna decorate a holiday cookie with some icing and some sprinkles we also we're gonna have like a hot chocolate bar where they're gonna get hot chocolate they can pick out marshmallows and they can get like peppermint sticks all that good stuff the easiest way to make hot chocolate is in a crock pot so I brought my crock pot from home and then we just put in chocolate milk instead of trying to mix like the milk and actual cocoa powder just buy chocolate milk throw it in the crock-pot heat it up and you are ready to go now I wanted to talk you through our activities for today and kind of you know our schedule we wanted to still be able to have our block classes today for at least part of the day so we could kind of celebrate with them so we decided to do our blocks in the morning so we'll have study hall first because we don't have plan anytime on Fridays yeah and then we are going to do our block so I'm down my block one for an hour and block two for an hour with our blocks me and the other teacher that teaches math we're gonna be doing the saran wrap ball game which if you've never heard of this what are you doing with your life you need to get on this it's so much fun basically the students say in a circle so we're gonna do smaller groups of like eight students they sit in a circle if someone will start with the saran wrap ball their goal is to try to unwrap it and if any prizes fall out along the way they get to keep those inside of here we put things like fuzzy socks skittles gummy bears Hershey Kisses many erasers little like trinkets and prizes things like that my team teacher literally went to Target just grabbed a whole bunch of stuff from the dollar spot and then we wrapped it up in this and rap the person next to them is rolling dice so their goal is to roll doubles of any number doesn't matter once they roll doubles you have to pass the saran ball so for example if the person next to me has a ceramic ball they're unwrapping it I'm rolling the dice once I get doubles I pass the dice to the people on my right and the saran wrap ball comes to me and I'm trying to unwrap it now don't worry we did kind of factor in you know everyone may not get a prize just depending on how it gets unwrapped so we do have extra prizes that we're gonna just kind of let the students pick from and this is our present to our students like we're not doing anything else besides pencils we're giving them each a holiday pencil this morning and that's it like these saran wrap balls are going to be their prizes I'm really excited to do this like tivity with that I'm like oh I could not wait because I think they're gonna really enjoy it then we're going to go to lunch after lunch we're gonna not quite certain our holiday party but we are gonna start a movie so we I'm sorry I'm losing my voice we are going to be watching the movie a small foot my students are gonna just have blankets and kind of spread out on the floor we'll go to recess while we are at recess we have some volunteers coming in to help set up for our party and then after recess we have about an hour so we will finish the movie do our holiday party drink hot chocolate eat snacks decorate cookies and then sugar them up and send them on their way so this was my Secret Santa gift from yesterday which I didn't have time to grab it because of the field trip but I got some Andes mints which I absolutely love these and then another die coke I will be drinking that today and then this morning we had our final reveal of the Secret Santa so we got our final gifts so I got a Starbucks gift card and then some scented washable markers and some of the emoji markers these are like the stamper ones which we use on our cup kudo cards when we're giving it students kudos so super excited about these as well awesome way to start my Friday I survived I made until winter break I am very hot and sweaty and gross right now because it is 60 degrees outside our heat is automatically set to come on so it's been super hot in the room all and I'm wearing like hot pajamas not a good combination okay just take my word for it however I had a wonderful day with my students take it back to the morning we did the saran wrap all so much stinking fun [Music] [Applause] [Music] I loved it definitely something I want to keep doing in the future then after that we had lunch we started movie went out Teresa came back had all of our snacks and finished the movie here is kind of what my room looked like afterwards thankfully I had amazing volunteers who came in and they helped to take care of pretty much everything they got everything set up they helped to clean up so my room is in pretty good sorts my desk you can see it but it's a hot mess right now but things could be worse you know overall I had a great day and I had a great week and typically this week is super stressful and overwhelming and it still must four-degree you know don't get me wrong like the stress is still upon me however I will say that focusing on those things that I really love about this week made it 10 million times better and I'm just happy that I had a very positive outlook because typically this time of year I'm just so stressed and I can't enjoy it but I totally enjoyed it this year I hope you enjoyed just seeing a glimpse into what I was doing this week and hopefully my mindset helped you to have a positive mindset if it did please please please go ahead and give this video a thumbs up also don't forget to subscribe to my channel and it's a notification that'll set you were notified every time I post a new video I will catch back up with you with my weekly classroom vlogs in the new year 2019 there's gonna be some changes coming okay I'm just gonna warn you know it's coming don't say I didn't tell you cuz I told you now but as always thank you for watching I love you all so much don't forget to think positive and I will catch you in 2019 thank you so much for watching all the way to the end of this video and for supporting my youtube channel if you want to check out any of my older videos you can use the two links right down here if you want to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any future videos you can use like right up here the links to all of my social media sites my teachers pay teacher's store my merchandise store my son store are in the description box and I'll catch you guys in the next one

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 359,124

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, teacherspayteachers, teachers pay teachers, tpt, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, classroom tour, a day in the life of a teacher, a week in the life of a teacher, christmas, christmas in the classroom, teachers christmas

Id: J7rmXtXN2vg

Length: 32min 51sec (1971 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 23 2018