Letters to Santa Freebie!

Before we start writing our letters to Santa, I like to have the students do their wishlist pre-writing. Depending on the grade, I would have them describe the item or "want" or tell why they want it. I've a few tear jerkers before...honestly, such sweet and selfless wishes! I would have them do this page first:

Then, I like to read The Jolly Postman to my class.

Then we start our talk about how to write letters. Of course, since my computer crashed, I don't have any pictures to show you of my anchor charts, but I found one from one of my favorite ladies!! Lyndsey, over at A Year of Many Firsts, has a fabulous post on it. 

I also found a few more on Pinterest for you, if you want to check those out.

PIN

PIN

Anyway, back to letters to Santa!

We then write our letters to Santa. When I taught 2nd and 3rd grade, I would have the students address and "stamp" envelopes to Santa at the North Pole.  I have TONS of envelopes that I use throughout the year...we always tried to address our pen pal letters in envelopes too. 

Where did I get the envelopes?? Well, I beg from my local grocery and Hallmark stores. They always have a TON of leftover envelopes...some places like to sell them, but I play the "teacher" card and they usually will just give them to me - just a handful.

(these are old pictures...with my old blog name on them, but since I'm home for the month of December, I had to steal old pictures. Shhhh... don't tell on me!)

Then, my friend's family would write all the kids letters back! I know... I love that family. I love that they did that for my kiddos.   After all the letters were written back to the kids, her husband (who actually worked for the post office) would come and deliver the mail.. and he did such a great job pretending he just came from the North Pole! 

I don't work with her anymore. I'm very sad about that on many levels and for many reasons, but this is one of them! ha!

Anyway, if you want some wishlist writing, click the pictures to download the prewriting and the letter pages.