Our ELF Day Mini Unit.. That We Never Got Around To

I hadn't planned on starting our holiday break yesterday, but that's what ended up happening.   We had a full day of lessons planned around the movie Elf-- a new holiday favorite around here.

While I'm not a huge Will Farrell fan, I finally gave Elf a real shot last year and found that I enjoyed it quite a bit as did my boys



For school we were reading a chapter book called The Forgotten Helper: A Christmas Story.


We were going to make Maple Crinkle Cookies (recipe here) to go with our movie.

For our craft today we were going to make paper Christmas chains (using these templates and instructions) and some snowflakes for the windows.

We even had some "elf" themed math planned.  Evan was going to do another roll, add and color sheet with elves on the paper and I had a fun game planned for Ian and Alec called The Great Elf Contest.  It was a free printable multiplication game that I thought would be lots of fun.

 Instead we wrapped ALL the boys gifts that they had made over the past month-- I had no idea how many crafts we had put together until we started wrapping them.  I had bought 30 tiny little bags perfect for giving ornaments and other assorted small crafts as gifts.  I figured we'd have plenty of bags, but I was wrong!  We had to run out mid- day and buy 20 more bags!


Before I knew it our day was just about over and we had to get ready for Alec's karate graduation.  He has already earned his next belt!  We got to watch board breaking demonstrations hear new Korean words and phrases and watch some of the junior black belts become apprentice black belts.  It was a great night.

Self- defense demonstrations

Being awarded his orange belt

  

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