We have been busy little elves around here. Each year in the past we’ve made holiday treats for the kids to share with their teachers and classmates. This year I wanted to do the same, plus my classes. I also wanted to give my students little goodbye/thank you gifts. Unfortunately between the three classes (1st, 3rd, and 5th) there are 86 kids and I have about zero available time. I also wanted to come up with a super awesome thank you gift for my mentor teacher, and a little some thing for the other four teachers on my team. I have been quite torn between wanting to be awesome and make everything perfect, and just wanting to sleep. I finally decided I have to let go of the idea of individual gifts for the students. There are just too many of them. I thought it would be fun to get my 5th graders a MadLibs book (fits in with my writing classes, grade level, fun and educational, etc), but at over $3/book and 48 students, and me having no income… well, that just didn’t make sense.

This week I found myself on a baking binge and tonight we pulled together a nice showing for tomorrow. I have a stack of MadLibs as a gift for my mentor teacher; an awesome CD (They Might Be Giants, “Here Comes Science”) for Lex’s teacher, Eve’s teacher, and my mentor teacher; and a plate of cookies for all of the relevant teachers and staff. I started with eleven plates (five on my team, three in Lex’s room, and three in Eve’s room), but then Eve decided she really wanted to bring treats to the specials teachers and a few other people so she made bags (she didn’t like the plates I was putting together!) of cookies for nine people, plus the eight Lex and I did. Cookies galore! Every night this week Alan came home to find more cookies. He must have thought I was losing my mind! :) All of the classes are having parties tomorrow so I’m going to send in plates of cookies for the students as well. We’ll be lucky if we have any left after that! I’ll have to do more baking this weekend. ;)

Decorating gingerbread cookies a few days ago. Here’s a question for you: How do you ruin perfectly good gingerbread cookies? Answer… let children decorate them! So much sugar and candy on such a perfectly nice cookie.

Lex worked really hard on his designs this year. I think they came out so nice.

We packaged up several of the cookies to send out in care packages today.

I got a bag of Hershey Kisses from BJs and Eve insisted on opening all of them. I made a triple batch of Peanut Butter Blossoms and we still had tons of kisses left. This evening we made the pretzel/kisses/m&ms treats. Eve asked how many to make and I said we would make them until we used up all the unwrapped Hershey Kisses. It ended up being 3 trays full!

When I first asked the kids what we should do with all the extra unwrapped Hershey Kisses… this was their answer!

Lex and I started an assembly line cookie plate production. Eve came down later and threw her own kinks into the works, insisting on bagging hers, not using plates, and making an extra half dozen. How can I say no to sharing the cookie love! :)

Tomorrow is the last day before Christmas vacation. I believe every class will be watching movies and eating cookies. First and fifth have pyjama day and Lex is jealous that his class isn’t doing that. He’s happy that lots of “free choice time” was on the calendar for tomorrow though. Should be a fun day.