During Christmas time, my school holds a hallway decorating contest.  This year my hallway chose "Tis the Season of Giving."  Each classroom in our hallway chose a charity or organization to pass on the gift of giving.  My classroom chose to help our school district's Backpack Program.  Each Friday, our Family Resource Center delivers bags of snacks to kids who don't have enough to eat over the weekend.  We wanted to teach our students that "giving is better than receiving," and the importance of thinking of others.  We have invited the entire school to take part in our hallway's theme and help out any of the organizations we chose.  The pictures don't reflect this, but our tubs are now over-flowing with donations.  The kids are really seeing that they are making a difference.  

The Christmas tree is made with my students handprints.  It took A LOT of handprints, but I wanted my door/ hallway to represent my students work, not my work.  In order to get the lights to stay up on the tree, I normally used hot glue.  I didn't have the time for that, so I found that ornament hangers worked just as well.

In the above photo, you can see blue sheets of paper.  This is where I display student work.  Here is an idea that I thought of this year...On the top of each paper the students' names are displayed on a gingerbread man or ornament.  Instead of changing the paper for each holiday, I laminated the paper and hot glued little clothespins to the paper.  I also put a velcro dot on each paper.  This allows me to change the name plates for each season very easily.

Because my kids were helping others by donating to the charities, I told them they were just like Santa's Elves.  Each child made an elf.  I got my elf template from another blog.  Remember- I am new to blogging, and I didn't write down the name of the blog.  When I find which blog this template came from, I will give it credit.  The one thing that I changed on my elves was the writing that each elf is holding.  My writing is about what that particular child did to help and how it made them feel.  

Each year I do a Christmas Countdown that begins the week after Thanksgiving.  Each day, one of Santa's helpers writes my students a note.  Each note gives them something extra.  I try to keep the extras as inexpensive as possible, and most of the time they are things that cost no money.  Some ideas include: a Christmas movie, Christmas songs during center time, 5 extra minutes of activity time, or to make a Christmas craft.  My kids look forward to this everyday.  It is very exciting!!!  I just love the holiday time!