This past week, we celebrated our Polar Express Week in first grade. It was quite the week! We did a bunch of crafts and activities and worksheets and watched the movie and read the book and…and…and…ahh I’m exhausted! But Friday was a great day, as we pulled it all together and had a fun Train Luncheon with catered sub sandwiches that looked like trains (complete with cucumber “wheels”), hot chocolate we had been brewing all day in a crock pot, followed by making some graham cracker “edible art” trains together, and enjoying a delicious a-dor-a-ble train cake made by one of my moms that owns Baskin Robbins to top it all off. Poor, poor parents, receiving sugar-driven children coming home after the bell rang. I keep telling myself it’s fair though; I have to deal with them sugar-driven for 6 hours during the day, so we should get to share right? ;)
Here they are enjoying the movie
Our Train Luncheon, hard at working building their own trains
One of my mom’s helping her son, concentration at work
Our FABULOUS ice cream cake dessert
A couple of my girls with their finished products! 
More of the end products…we used graham crackers for the train, icing for the “glue”, oreos for the wheels, 1/2 of a ho-ho for the “chimney/smoke thing” (haha, I really don’t know much about trains), M&Ms, colored marshmallows, and gumdrops for decorations and the “coal” in the open back part of the train, and finally, coconut shavings for “snow.” It was a lot of fun, one of the biggest messes I have made in class, and a definite sugar-high promoter for my kids. But oh well, it’s Christmas, when all the good crafts and other fun things come out, and I would have wanted to do all of this when I was in 1st grade! Whew~glad it is over though.
On to “Happy Birthday Jesus” week and then a blessed two weeks off for Christmas/New Year’s break. Hooray!
Mom said,
December 12, 2009 @ 8:44 pm
Oh wow, those train cars made from graham crackers sure are cute! And that ice cream cake – oh my!! how fun was this?!
Those cute little kids will never forget this Nicole – nice job!!
lil_seester said,
December 13, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
wow… train cakes…. seriously bringing back some memories. i’m surprised mom didn’t bring it up! looks fun!
abby said,
December 21, 2009 @ 10:31 am
your cake looks so…. good! fun fun fun! are neighbor had polar express too but yours looked like more fun!
p.s. did they wear there pj’s??
desertdiva208 said,
December 21, 2009 @ 9:23 pm
No, no pj’s…so sad
My principal said nope on that one. We got to do all the rest though, so the kids were pretty happy. 