It's a mystery!

November, 30
So today after lunch recess my students and I walked back up to my classroom. I had them get their usual 1, 2, 3, drink and told them to put away their jackets and have a seat on the floor. Our writing block is right after lunch and I like to start out our writers workshop with a mini lesson. This week we were learning about writing letters and the parts of letters in preparation for writing letters to Santa next week. I was taking my time putting my lunch bag away, getting a drink of Diet Coke and checking email quick (basically stalling ;) ). One of my students had asked "Are we reading a story?" I said, "No, it's writing time". He said "But there's a book on your chair!" I asked what he was talking about - by this time a few other students had joined him on the carpet and were curious about this book also. One of my girls even noticed and exclaimed "There's a note! It says 'Read me from question mark" Of course I played dumb and said "Who put that book there?! Did someone put it there? Did someone leave a note?" of course they all said that none of them had done it and that they were all at lunch. Then they asked if I had put the note there and I said no, and that I had run to the post office, the grocery store, and McDonald's during lunch and that I hadn't even had a chance to eat my lunch yet... cue the well placed McDonald's bag on my desk (the not eating lunch part was true... cold fries are no good when you get to eat them an hour later during your prep :-/). I asked the kids "Well should we do what the note says? Should we read the book?" They all shouted yes and so we read the book and found out that tomorrow there will be a surprise. They all predicted that it must have been an elf that left the book because it talked about Santa sending a helper to watch the students and report if they had been good or bad each day, they also said that it must have been an Elf because the note was written on green paper with a red marker and those were Christmas colors. Of course for the rest of the day there were "elf" sightings and "things moved" inside desks. Here's a picture of what our mystery visitor left us.