Grinch Day!

On the last day before break we had our first ever Grinch Day!

I first read about Grinch Day on Cara's blog "The First Grade Parade" {you can find that post here} and then again on Amy's blog "Step into 2nd Grade".  
After reading about all the fun they were having I knew I wanted to try it too!

So here is how we did Grinch Day!

*Disclaimer: Any printables you see below I will unfortunately not be sharing as a freebie in this post because Dr. Seuss and his company has a very strict copyright law prohibiting the use of his characters in any work that is distributed without consent.  I hope you can still use some of the ideas I share!

I got a Grinch shirt for the day! It was actually hard finding a Grinch shirt! It's from the boys section at Old Navy. It was the last one they had that was in a size that would fit me (this is boys 14-16, all the other shirts were a 4-5!) so I snatched it up as soon as I saw it! And it was on sale that day! #score

We had Grinch Day on the last day before winter break.  After the kids came in and unpacked they got to work on their grinch hats.

Here is my sample.

And here are some of the kid's hats!

I was surprised at how fast they were able to get these hats made! I thought it would take more time since there are a lot of pieces but they figured out the steps with minimal support.    My ECE supported the Grinch hat table and I made them their hats by stapling them on to sentence strips as they finished their Grinch faces.

The facial expressions on the Grinch's were hilarious!

If they were done or were waiting for a turn to make their grinch hats they went to one of our grinch themed centres!

Measuring and Ordering Grinch Hearts

Students were asked to either order the hearts by size or measure the hearts using the green manipulatives.

Grinch Play Dough

I set out some green play dough with glitter, yellow beads, green heart beads and pipe cleaners cut into various lengths and the kids either used their imagination to make something green or tried to recreate the Grinch.

Here is the sample that I left out at that centre.  The kids surprised me here too and made some really cute Grinches!! Too bad I was too busy stapling hats to snap a pic!

Grinchy Lables

I made a simple grinch label sheet for the kids to work on for a centre.

Grinchy Green Sensory Bags

My ECE made these sensory bags.  I set out the book "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" with the bags and the students looked for words in the book and practiced printing them on the bags with their fingers.

After all the hats were done, we cleaned up the centres and talked about things that are green like the Grinch.  Then we completed this chart.

Then I read them the book "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"

I introduced this Grinch punch-a-bunch before I read the story and told them that there were questions about the story inside them.  We talked about how we would have to listen to the story carefully so that if they are chosen to come and do a punch-a-bunch they are ready to answer the questions!

And it worked like a charm!
I have never seen them sit so quietly for a story before!

We had 1 student at a time come up and punch the punch-a-bunch to reveal the question in each bunch.

Here is one of the questions.

The other questions were:

- Who were the characters in the story?

- What was the setting?

- Did the Grinch like Christmas at the beginning of the story? How do you know?

- Why did the Grinch hate Christmas?

- Who was "The Who" that found the Grinch in her house?

Then we were ready to watch the cartoon version!

We served the kids their grinchy green treats and they got to eat them while they were watching the movie.  I told them before we began that they would be voting on their favourite green treat after the movie so to watch the movie but think about which treat was their favourite too as they ate!

Grinch cupcakes: French Vanilla cupcakes + cream cheese frosting + green sprinkles + heart made with gel icing

Grinch punch: Sprite with green food colouring + lime sorbet

Grinch kabobs: mini marshmallow + strawberry + banana slice + green grape on a toothpick

After the movie each student shared their favourite green treat and recorded their favourite on our graph with a bingo dabber.

Grinch cupcakes were the class favourite!

To finish it off we played pin the heart on the Grinch! 

I drew this Grinch on the whiteboard with washable markers...

And the kids got to take turns "pinning" the heart on the Grinch! We used a head band as a blindfold, gave the kids a heart (I just cut a bunch out from red construction paper) with a piece of tape on it and spun the kids around 3 times and let them go! They LOVED this!

We had SO much fun!

But here are some things I would change for next year!

Reflections & Next Steps:

1. Jazz up my entry way! I would love to make a cute sign that says "Welcome to Grinchmas" or something like that with streamers coming down it! I was going to do streamers this year and I thought I had green but turns out I only had enough to do a quarter of my doorway #fail.  Next year I will actually buy green streamers!!

2. I would actually tell the kids before hand and send a note home so the parents know to dress their kids in green! I planned this last minute and I had every intention of telling the kids to wear green before school ended on Thursday... but with the hustle and bustle of packing up parent gifts and handing out our gifts to the students I totally forgot :( 

3. Find Grinch stickers and make a Grinch memory game to set out as one of the centres.

4. Green all the things! I would cover our tables in green butcher paper or plastic table cloth to make the room more "grinchy".

5. Grinch Art Bin: We always have art bin available (it's just a bin with a variety of art supplies in it where the students can create however they like) but next year I think I'll set out a Grinch Art Bin with lots of green craft materials and see what they come up with!

6. Make more than 6 punch-a-bunches! The kids loved this and I wish I could have given more of them a turn!

7. Allocate more time for "Pin the Heart on the Grinch"! I though 20 minutes would be plenty of time but we only got through half the class.  We definitely needed more time for this!

Grinch Day was a super fun and successful morning! Have you ever done Grinch Day before? Do you have any easy and fun Pre-K/K activities that you do? Please share them in the comments! I love hearing about new ideas!