This year I’ve jumped on the Elf on a Shelf bandwagon, and my class and I are having a ball.

It all started on November 29th, when my Principal got a special delivery, that was very cold and very fragile, and addressed to my class. (My Prin was awesome – she played it up so well for the kids who were just GIDDY with excitement.) She let them all feel the box and had a wonderful conversation going with them.

Then we opened the box…

Our elf – as yet unnamed – arrived complete with her book and a special Merry Christmas banner for our classroom. She watched the class from the box for the rest of the day.

By a very democratic vote, she was named Elfina by the children in the class.

What was really, really lovely, though – at lunchtime (just after she arrived), a group of my Grade 1 girls were running around to the yard duty teachers to tell them all about the elf that had arrived to watch their classroom and report back to Santa. Their excitement was just gorgeous.

And it’s yet to disappear.

Every morning this week the students have run into the classroom and LOOKED for Elfina to see what she’s gotten up to. They usually drag along parents, grandparents, siblings, and anyone else they can find to see what she’s been doing.

Here’s our week in pictures:

On Monday, Elfina hung up our Merry Christmas banner… then hung around and watched the class from the wall for the day.

On Monday afternoon we were building things with Lego… so when we came in on Tuesday morning, Elfina and Pete had been hard at work building a house and a Christmas tree!

On Wednesday she got tangled up in the Christmas lights she bought the class for our Christmas tree.

(Side note – it was pouring down with rain on Wednesday and the kids were stuck inside ALL DAY. Whenever someone walked into the room, the first thing the kids shouted out was ‘DON’T TOUCH THE ELF! SHE’LL LOSE HER MAGIC!!’ So not kidding!)

On Thursday, Elfina took a nap in the tissue box. Popular theory is she was partying at the North Pole over night. 😉

The kiddos were quite put out by the fact that they couldn’t access the tissue box. We had to dig out a spare box for the day. Just in case.

Earlier in the week we made ELF acrostic poems and the kiddos drew their own elves to decorate their poems.

Well… Elfina spotted a remarkably accurate likeness on the wall and had to point it out!

We also spend 15-20 minutes each day journalling about Elfina’s adventures in our An Elf’s Life journals. (I forgot to take photos – but I’ll take some next week to share because they’re just GORGEOUS!) My kiddos have done such a wonderful job on them. We brainstorm a list of important words they might need for the one or two sentences and then they go and write. I don’t have to prompt – they’re SO excited to write about what Elfina is doing that there are no complaints, no one sitting around staring into space…

Seriously, I need something like this all year ’round!

If you haven’t grabbed my An Elf’s Life freebie, yet, just click the link or the image below to download it.

AND… as an added bonus for all of you elf-loving folk, I’ve got a class book template for you all to use:

(BLM cover included)

Just click on either image to download the freebie!

So… that’s been my week with the elf. I’ll have more pictures next Friday of our adventures. (Alternatively, if you follow my on Instagram, you’ll catch them a bit earlier!)

Enjoy your weekend, lovelies!