Holiday Spirit



This week has been a little crazy with hearing about terrifying news from back home. Honestly when everyone told me at our Saturday night Christmas party that someone had shot some kindergarten children I could not talk about it. A good friend said very insightfully, "Don't tell her about it, she will get upset." This is the reason I hate watching the news and would rather be kept in the dark....some things are just too hard to swallow. As I went to work on Monday I wasn't sure how to approach my job. I was exhausted from a holiday fun filled weekend, but also felt a different way about being a kindergarten teacher after hearing this terrible news. Also, it is the week before Christmas, so this week is supposed to be one of the happiest weeks of the year with my kids....I didn't want to let any sad news get me down. Literally when any other teachers started talking about the shooting in the workroom I did one of the "La, la, la" numbers, plugged my ears, and walked away, because I could not let this put me in a funk with my kids.

It's funny the way that God made me though, as I could not have predicted how the day would turn out. As I sat down for circle time on Monday, head ache coming on, hot coffee in hand, stressed about their upcoming test and thoughts of a shooting in the back of my mind, I still didn't go to a negative place. It took one silly comment from one of the CUTEST kids Jason to put me into silly Ms.Nikki mode. He looked at me and said something so completely normal like, "Teacher, do we have library today?", in his cute and heavy Korean accent followed by a huge hug from a little girl EJ and a glance to the back of the room to see John doing taekwon do kicks. How can you be angry at the world when you are surrounded with these faces? 

 

I decided, who cares about anything but these crazy kids today? It's Christmas, Jesus was born next week! It's time to celebrate, laugh, and have fun! Who cares about anything but that. So we did our work of course, but there were lots of silly laughs, tickles and dancing and singing through the halls (which is usually strictly prohibited by Ms.Nikki!) We enjoyed each other and enjoyed the day!  I decided we would start "Naughty & Nice" jars which would help them to be on their best behavior all week.

 

 

If they are in the "nice" jar come Thursday after school, I will bring them a CHRISTMAS SURPRISE on Friday! They were ecstatic about this announcement. They had a million questions about what the surprise would be and how they can get around it, sneaky little kiddos, but I'm sure they will all get my little reward. (which will probably be Santa hats or something like that for them to wear on Friday when we have our Christmas festivities.) PitterPan completely made my day when he asked me, "After you done with jars, you give to Santa?" with a huge grin on his face! He is adorable.

 

We continued the day practicing our Christmas carols, and decorating Christmas cards. This card was adorable that Jason made for me:

  

 

It was so much fun enjoying the festivities of Christmas and looking around at our fantastically decorated classroom! We have worked so hard over the past couple of weeks to color Santa hats, stockings, and cut out snowflakes to make our room look very festive and ready for Christmas! I even attempted at making this Santa, which I have to say turned out very nice!

 

Over this holiday season I have been so sick and so I have not gotten a chance to decorate my apartment with tons of Christmas decorations like I usually do! So, I decided I needed a very festive classroom to make me excited about the holidays and with my kids LOVING to color, it was very easy to get this task accomplished! I always feel so loved by my children and feel like such a part of the school and the kid's when I peer over at our beautifully decorated window! I see my name along with every other child's name next to Santa and I remember the innocence and joy that comes with this time of year!

 

 

I also bought a cute mini tree for my desk at work to keep me feeling joyful and ready for Christmas!

 

My favorite part of this past Monday and this whole week has been the new theme of our Christmas afternoon! When we went to the library John found "Twas the Night before Christmas" and I decided we would read a Christmas book every day this week. We read a Christmas book and then talk about the book, usually leading to questions about Santa and reindeer's! I stand in front of 11 wide eyed 6 year olds just hanging on my every word and it is so sweet to partake in! It leaves me feeling full of love and reminiscing on the times where I was excited for Santa to come and bring me presents!

After our Christmas book is done, I tell the children to get on their coats and backpacks to go home for the day and walk over to the CD player to put on "Carol of the Bells." I absolutely LOVE this song, mostly because me and my sister used to laugh at people who would sing this song so seriously since it is such a hard and creepy song to sing! To this day, I'm not sure the lyrics of half of the song, I just make up my own since it is so fast! It is one of my favorite songs because of all the good memories I have of me and my sister singing it in our church choir, or dancing around our living room laughing and singing the "Ding Dongs" back and forth to one another. Because of this, I have put this song on everyday at the end of school for the past 3 weeks and I can't help but want to dance around to it since I used to do this when I was young!

 So this week as one of my kids said "Do the bell song!" I was not going to object! I put it on and my naughty little boys who I love SO MUCH, run over to me and say "DANCE WITH ME!" and I started swinging Jason around and twirling and jumping around the classroom. PitterPan came over to join the dance party and then John too, and as we twirled and swayed and they tried their best to sing it in their broken English, I couldn't stop laughing! They all laughed and said "MORE MORE!" and we danced until the bell rang, and it was a festive and fantastic day.

 

Christmas equals a time to celebrate! Thanks to my gorgeous eleven children, and a little bit of sillly Ms.Nikki, that's what we have been doing this week! Ho, Ho, Ho!