Elementary Christmas Chaos....errrrr...Party :)

Today was the elementary Christmas party! It was definitely a lot of exhausting fun. :) We started the day by watching a short Christmas movie, so the students who needed to finish up some tests could get them done without missing out on any of the games.

After the movie was over, everyone got assigned either to the "Green" team or the "Red" team for game time. (How original, right? :P) The first game we played was Christmas Memory. I had a box of 20 different items such as a jingly bell, ribbon, Christmas bow, glitter, candy, mug, candle, stickers, sock etc. I laid them all out on the desk so everyone could see them. After each team viewed them, the items were then put back in the box. The teams then went into separate areas to try to list as many of the items they could remember.

The Red team working hard to list all the items they could remember

The Green team working hard to list all the items they could remember

I was pretty impressed with the outcome! One team remembered ALL 20 items and the other team only missed one. Hmmmmmmm....it's interesting to see how good their memories are when there is a game involved, isn't it? :D

The next game we played was "Who Wants to be a Merit Millionaire?" However, the highest number to reach was only 1,000, not 1,000,000!!! The two guy captains of each team got to sit in the "hot seat" and answer 10 questions to get points for their team. Each team reached all the way to 1,000 points! Both guys used up their "50/50" and one used up their "phone a friend", but besides that they did great answering questions about Christmas. I enjoyed asking them, "Is that your final answer??!!" and see them squirm until I revealed whether or not they answered correctly. Oh, yes...fun, fun :D

Taylor representing the Red team

Matthew representing the Green team

Next we played a game called "Christmas Anagrams". Each team was given 20 clue cards, and a bunch of letter tiles. They had to try to figure out the answer to each of the clues by spelling the words out with the letter tiles. (What a sneaky way to get a spelling lesson in, right?? :))

Both teams figured out all 20 clues!! There were clues such as "O Little Town of...." or "What are put on many front doors during Christmas time?"

Don't you just love how they are all putting their heads together and working as a team to accomplish their goal?! I wish that happened ALL the time!!

The last game I had planned was a Christmas poster scavenger hunt. Each team was given a bunch of glue sticks and a blank poster board. I then gave them a piece of paper that I designed with either "Merry Christmas" or "Joy to the World" on it along with some Christmas pictures to go around the words. While they were upstairs in the lunchroom forming their "plan of attack", I hid all the letters and pictures they needed all around the downstairs hallway and in the two classrooms. Once I gave them the go-ahead, a couple of children from each team would go downstairs and try to find the letters and pictures they needed to complete their poster. It was going well at first, but unfortunately this game brought out the "competitive streak" in each of the children, and so we had to address the issue of having a "team spirit" and "good attitude" towards the end when it seemed like we were about to start the Green & Red Civil War! *Sigh* Oh well! Such is life!!! In the end, though, both posters turned out cute.

Because we had some extra time to kill before lunch was ready, I decided to make the gift exchange a rather long drawn-out process!! I turned it into a "hot potato" game of sorts, but we used a stuffed snowman instead :D. I played some Christmas music and whenever I stopped the song, whoever had the snowman would get to give their gift to the friend whose name they had drawn for the gift exchange. Once everyone had a gift, they were then allowed to open their presents and see what they got.

After a game of Christmas musical chairs which helped me to determine the winner, everyone was so happy to discover that lunch was ready! We had all worked up a good appetite!!! Mrs. Lytle outdid herself by making a scrumptious Christmas dinner for us - ziti, garlic bread, and fruit salad. For dessert we had cookies that were left-over from The Journey (the Christmas program our church did last week). I think we will be seeing those cookies for quite awhile!!! :)

All the kiddos anxiously waiting for lunch to start :)

Oh my, was it a fun, yet exhausting morning!! This was my second year planning the elementary Christmas party, and I had a blast! I love trying to think up creative games to play. However, I can't take full credit for many of the games we played this year. I got lots of ideas from the Internet....I just "tweaked" them a bit!!

Sooooo until next year!!

Every year Mrs. Lytle and I figure out what things work best and what things don't work best for elementary Christmas parties. By Christmas of 2020, I think we will have it down perfect!!!! :D