Christmas Magic in Kindergarten!

One of the great things about teaching in early childhood is that these kids still believe in magic! I love to see their little faces light up with delight, so when I find new ways to make this magical time of year even more wonderful, I do. This year, I discovered the Santa Spy Cam app (free) which uses augmented reality to bring elves into your home (or classroom)! There are a few scenes that are free, if you want some more scenes or Santa himself to appear in your living room you'll have to pay a little money to unlock them.

We went on a field trip recently and our homeroom parent came in to decorate the room for Christmas while we were gone. When we came back the kids were all asking who decorated and I kept telling them that Santa's elves came and did it! Many of the kids didn't believe me, so I created evidence! Take a look. :)

How can they argue with me now?! ;)

If you have children this will surely bring Christmas to life, especially if you purposely go through setting up the iPad to catch Santa's elves on camera the night before Christmas!

The second thing I did, which probably isn't that new to many, is to create a video from Santa's Portable North Pole. This is a site where you can put in a child's name, location and other information or personalize a video message from Santa! To make it work for my class, I simply put in "Ms. A's Class" and a class photo. There is only one part in this video where a pronoun is used and my kids didn't notice it. I made sure to choose the 'naughty/nice' child option so that Santa could tell them to work harder at "listening to your teacher". It just might help as we finish of these last few weeks!

Hope you enjoy these and happy holidays everyone!