I found the cutest Rudolph craft on Pinterest and I knew I had to have my students make it this week. (The inspiration was found on Fiskars.com, but the page is no longer available.)

We read the story Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Robert L. May and then worked on our bags and a writing prompt. We are still in the process of working on our stories, but I'll post a picture when we finish. We added crumpled newspaper to our bags to make them fluffy.






The best thing about this project is that right before Christmas, I'm going to take the bags down off the bulletin board, take out the newspaper and put each child's Christmas present in the bag. That means, no wrapping presents this year!!! That is thrilling to me because it always takes me forever!

As I was introducing a few new pages to our overhead projector binder today, I decided the kids have show enough responsibility to begin moving the projector toward our regular board to begin tracing pictures. The kids wanted me to add some Christmas pictures for their prompts. I have long manila paper available for the students to sticky tack to the board and trace the objects from the transparency.

My students are expected to write about whatever picture they choose to trace onto their paper. You wouldn't believe how good they are when they think it might be their turn. :)

Here's a printable to share.
Christmas Writing Prompts for the Overhead