Gingerbread Men

One big thing that our administration is trying to improve this year is collaboration across grade levels. It's so easy to just get caught up with day-to-day teaching and then only meeting with your team for Wednesday planning that sometimes we almost forget there are other teachers in the building! Although the biggest focus is for us to work with 3rd and 5th grade teachers (to see where our kids are coming from/going, etc), my class is going way across grade levels and participating in Kindergarten reading buddies again this year!
Every Friday morning, one of the Kindergarten teachers walks her kids down to my room, drops half of them off in my room and takes half of my kids. For the next 30 or so minutes, the Kindergartners either read to my kids or we have an activity planned for them. Since reading buddies got snowed out last Friday, we rescheduled for Tuesday. Being that it was only a day before break, we decided to skip the reading and do a "party." (At least, that's what I told my kids it was... thankfully none of them questioned why it was no where close to being a party!) The K teacher dropped her kids off in my room for the craft portion of the party. The K students had been doing a unit on Gingerbread Men (apparently there are TONS of books about Gingerbread Men, a scavenger hunt, writing stories, activities, etc...), so she had bought foam gingerbread men for them to decorate. I had found foam stockings, wreathes, and bells for my kids to make.
She took half of my kids to her room to do "active time".... aka, allowing my kids to make fools of themselves while dancing to ridiculous songs with 5-year-olds (the Tooty-Ta, the Chicken Dance, etc). We did this for their first meeting way back in September and my kids have been asking for it ever since!
After 20 or so minutes, I lined up the kids in my room and we walked down to her room  and switched kids. I took the dancers back for craft time and left the artists to be active. All of the kids had a BLAST and it was so much fun to watch them working/dancing together. It makes me proud to see "my" kids helping/being a role model to the little tykes. It reassures me that they DO know how to show respect and they are learning something in my class!
One of my students didn't have a reading buddy, so I deemed him as the official photographer for the morning. He actually impressed me with his ability. Here are some pictures of the crafts the kiddos made:

This was my favorite Gingerbread Man made by a Kindergartner. Look how creative he got with the stickers! Using ornaments for eyes and a letter 'D' for the scared mouth!! Haha. Love it!

They had free reign of what they were allowed to do on the Gingerbread Men.... clearly.

I got bored just walking around/supervising and decided to pose for some pictures. :)

One of the wreaths made by one of my 4th graders. Notice any difference in quality?