Gingerbread houses & Parent gifts

Hello my fellow teachers XOXO I hope this blog post finds you happy, safe, and healthy.  Tis the season, right?  My heart will not rest easy for a while with the tragedy of so many innocent children and adults, but I am doing my best to stay in the Christmas spirit for my students, Mike, and my friends and family.. I am so lucky to have them and I would give them the world if I could..

So, my kids and I made Gingerbread houses last week :) They came out cute, but they were not as easy as we all thought they would be! Of course, we knew it would be messy, but our roofs and walls were caving in like crazy ;)

 

 Their final products were so cute!! We made not only gingerbread (well, really graham cracker) houses, but also apartments, apartment complexes, garages, and even tents ;)

 

I also made a gingerbread house at my apartment :) I never have the time (or the patience sometimes) but I always manage to do one... last year Mike and I did a train, it was adorable.

This year, I wanted to do something special for my kids to give to their parents for Christmas.  I found canvas's on sale at Michaels, and I thought it would be the most perfect gift - a beautiful painting for their families!  They were on sale for an even better price, but the cashier did not catch that and I did pay regular price :( But I think I might have had a coupon that day, so I wasn't too unhappy! Us teachers really have to be careful with our money, our budget is not big!

Here are how some of them came out :) We have a couple redo's (even with a first draft copy on regular paper) but I am glad that my fourth graders were finally like "YES, this is perfect and I am proud of it"

I also wanted to show you the gift I gave one of my parents who works and does a lot for me and the school I work at.  She really does, so I wanted to know she was appreciated.. I had a groupon for it, and it's called Corso's Cookies :)

 

One of the students that I tutor (Kyle) he is in 8th grade now, and he made me the coolest thing in his technology class.... it's a homemade gumball machine! My kiddos went crazy over it when I bought some Christmas gumballs to start it off :) How clever and thoughtful.. esp. because he MADE it!!

 

I am so full of pictures I guess.. I will leave you with my door crafts that I used during the Christmas season... the ADORABLE penguins can be found HERE from Amy Lemons herself.  She has such cute products!!!  My kids even named their Penguins (I like "Pablo the Penguin" haha)
Also, the Gingerbread men saying that was on the door was made up by one of my students.

 They are so creative!