Sometimes you just color.

Yesterday was one of THOSE days at school. I was grumpy. A cold front was blowing in. Christmas is barreling down on us. There was a Supermoon recently and my kiddos were just W.I.L.D!!! After school  I was just in funk and knew we needed a day to get back on track. So...I drove over to Michaels and purchased a giant cardboard gingerbread house. We are currently wrapping up a 2 week study of The Gingerbread Man stories and I had seen a friend post about these cute cardboard houses.

So this morning I set out to break our funk with a giant cardboard box.

During learning stations I pulled out each cardboard piece, dumped markers all over the floor, and said "have at it guys."  And they did. They were so excited. They colored with a fever I had never witnessed before.  I had kiddos choosing to color rather than playing on Ipads or in waterbeads. In fact 15 out of my 20 kiddos chose to color the house rather than work in learning stations.

At first I relished in the few moments of peace and tried to check off things on my never-ending to do list but after seeing my kiddos having so much fun I decided to push that to the side and lay down beside them and color.

And we colored. For an hour and a half. We colored. And talked. And laughed.  And sang Christmas songs. And bonded. Nope...this was not on my lesson plans. No...I had not planned out standards or anything "academic".

But sometimes that is okay. You see...by putting aside learning objectives and school stuff...you get to actually listen to your kiddos. I learned about a  student's trip to eat pizza the night before, what one kiddo ate for dinner at his grandmother's house the night before, and that one kiddo was secretly hoping his tooth would fall out at school so he could get one of those cool treasure boxes to put his tooth in. I heard stories of Melvin and Marvin...two elves that live at one student's home as well as many other elf stories. Elves are important to kindergarteners right now. I heard my kids encouraging each other and complimenting each other. They helped each other out and showed endurance because they wanted to finish the project.

But academics were not completely pushed away. They are always there. We planned and looked ahead to see which part needed colored next. We discussed how colors changed as they overlapped. We discussed patterning and counted gum drops. We worked as a team.

And it was fun...so much fun. I had lost my joy for a bit in the classroom as I was caught up in all the "stuff" that comes at this time of year. But today...I found it again...by coloring a giant gingerbread house with my kinders.

And it was beautiful!