fun monkey bars

This year my school was so lucky. Our school was selected to be the beneficiary of a large collection of school supplies and gifts. Angel Flight made arrangements for delivery and a visit from Santa. At Christmas, Santa Claus flies with Utah wing of Angel Flight West as part the organization’s annual charitable mission to bring gifts to children at Title I schools in Utah. The primary mission of Angel Flight West is providing transportation to patients who must travel long distances for medical care. We wait, in a freezing morning, until Santa finally arrived.  He joined the students in an assembly at the school and enjoyed a performance of several holiday songs. We have some photos here:   We can read it in the newspapers and watch it on the tv! http://www.ksl.com/?sid=27988748 http://fox13now.com/2013/12/10/angel-flight-brings-santa-school-supplies-to-utah-children/ http://www.thespectrum.com/article/20131210/NEWS01/312100017 htt...

We are on Thanksgiving!! already!! Time goes so fast... I did an easy activity with the children to decorate my wall. It consisted on writing something they were thankful for on a feather. I made a turkey and I stick all the feathers together. So easy and quick to do but beautiful to show. Here you have some pictures. On Monday my English partner and me enjoyed eating pumpkin pie on a cloth made by themselves and wearing pilgrim costumes. We wrote and draw about gratitude and appreciation in a Spanish mini book. I made the turkey myself but if you need the feathers you can find them here: http://www.actiludis.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Pluma-Indio-01.pdf And if you want to have the mini book you can find it here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spanish-My-Thankful-Book-393928 Hope you have a great Thanksgiving Day with your family and/or friends!

Maybe you think... Halloween? Now? And you are absolutely right but you can't imagine how busy and how things went these past weeks... I was doing some courses (I will talk about that sooner), my computer at home was broken and soooo slow... I hate when this happens and I think it is time to change it, it is too old and it doesn't run actually it doesn't walk or even crawl!! It was my birthday and also my son's and my daughter's!! Three in a row!! Schools has been crazy and work went out from my ears!! No too much time to spend sharing and writing in my blog... Although here I am now to post about some activities we did for Halloween. In my school children can't dress up so we just do some special activities. We did an Halloween sing Assembly and in my classroom we worked in different projects. You can see some of the crafts we did in these pictures: We also had math with Halloween activities, vocabulary, problem solving, math facts... And in the library we...

On November the 2nd the Mexicans celebrate a very special day called "The Day of the Dead". I am in a Dual Immersion School teaching Spanish and we have a lot of students from Mexico so I decided to do something special to teach different cultures around the world and how different or similar are with Halloween. El Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), a Mexican celebration, is a day to celebrate, remember and prepare special foods in honor of those who have departed. On this day in Mexico, the streets near the cemeteries are filled with decorations of papel picado , flowers, candy calaveras (skeletons and skulls), and parades. In order to celebrate, the families make altars and place ofrendas (offerings) of food such as pan de muertos baked in shapes of skulls and figures, candles, incense, yellow marigolds known as cempazuchitl (also spelled zempasuchil) and most importantly a photo of the departed soul is placed on the altar.  I have found a lot of activities i...

I have been working on seeds during all last month and I want to share some photos and activities we did during this unit. As you already know one of the activities we did is guessing... "which seed is it?" in order to know some characteristics of the seeds, how are they, where can we find them... There is a freebie with the activity in case you like it and here is one photo while the students were working on it.  We also worked on this booklet I made with the information I want them to know. When we talked or worked about something we went to the booklet to do an activity related with it. We read a nice story about seeds and how can be transformed in something big!! even for winning a prize! We did some crafts about dandelions and we learn about how seeds can travel. In Theatre Arts we were seeds and we grew up very high to become a plant... My students love to play a game with fly swatters and I use it with every goal I want them to learn. The game co...

In the Math Core for first graders we have to teach how to do doubles plus one or doubles minus one... but they must know doubles by heart to start learning the other goal!! So I have done some activities to study doubles from 1 to 10. I ask them everyday before going to the recess one of the facts. If they already know what I ask they can go to the playground but if they count with their fingers or they don't know the answer they go to the line again. It is funny for them and it is a good practice to learn these facts. I have uploaded one activity about doubles with pictures about Fall and Halloween. You can download them for free in my tpt page. Enjoy it!!

Math and Halloween are great topics to put together. Children love this day and they enjoy a lot doing any activity related with it. So, let's take advantage of it and let's work on Math having this topic as the main idea. I am working in reading and comprehending math problems. It is extremely important the students guess if they have to do an addition or a subtraction. It is important also they do this fact in the correct way and fast. I have prepared some pages that focus on this Math Activities. In the pack there are also flashcards so the children can trace, write, read and learn some vocabulary about Halloween. All the materials are in color and black and white so you can decide how are you going to work with them. I use them doing centers and the students can work on different tasks while I am with the students who are reading and doing the math problems because I want them to read and think what do they have to do. In this pages they are divided. One page is ...

Freebie included about seeds in my new tpt store. As you know I teach Spanish and We are talking about seeds. One of the activities I did with my first graders was comparing and guessing different seeds. I worked this unit in different ways. This activity was done while we worked in centers. One group was doing this fun worksheet while the others worked on these other ones: Art: We made a dandelion from an idea I saw on pinterest. Reading and coloring: I prepared a book about seeds and with the information I wanted them to know. One group was reading it with me and another one colored after reading.  Finally, another group worked with the seeds we were growing... They competed to see which group has the biggest plants... If you'd like to get the freebie about the first activity go to my tpt store and take it. It's free. Enjoy with it!! http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Seeds-Semillas-920593 Freebie linked in... <cente...

It's great to meet with parents but it's exhausting... I have to meet with 60 parents and I have to evaluate their children in front of them, this way they can see how their child is learning Spanish. This is how my English partner and me do the SEP Conferences... First of all I start doing the Spanish evaluation. In this first meeting, because the children has been in Spanish only since August, I have prepared the next: 1. We have learned to say... I like and I don't like so I show the children one face (happy or sad) and one color and the child has to say "I like red" or "I don't like green" depending on what I show to them. 2. I show them some flashcards I have prepared about animals for them to count and say the sentence... There are ....(number)... (animal) 3. We have been working in addition and subtraction in maths so I prepared some flashcards for them to count and add or take away (and also read the number sentence and tell me ...

I have five groups in my classroom. They are known as "apples", "pears", "cherries", "lemons" and "oranges". The reason they are named as fruits is mainly because I want them to learn new vocabulary in Spanish and while they learn some fruits they also learn the colors. There is a second reason for not giving them just color names. This is because, as some of you know, I have to different groups learning in my classroom: one is the red group and the other one is the blue group...and I don't want them to be confused with more colors... So last year every student used to have a box with their own supplies. But it didn't work very well because one student from the red group had to share the desk (and box of supplies) with another student from the blue group... At the end of the week a lot of erasers were lost and some neat and well organized students were angry with the partners they have sharing their desk and supplies. So this ...

Don't miss this opportunity!! Go to educents.com and look for today's deals. You will find 11 e books fromThe Old Schoolhouse Magazine FREE!! The books are 98 $ and you can get them for free until next week. Only 4 more days to have this deal! They are books for teachers explaining real-life heroes and mentors for the children. These multi-age unit study from The Old Schoolhouse encourages the learning of basic subject skills and inspires creativity while focusing on a particular, exciting occupation. Web page for Educents deals:  https://www.educents.com/ Web page for The Old Schoolhouse:  http://www.theoldschoolhouse.com/product/wannabe-the-series/    

This year I wanted my behavior chart look nicer, so I decided to color all the clothes pins at home... I teach two groups, red group and blue group, and I wanted only one chart for both so here it is what I did. First of all I colored the clothes pins... ... and I wrote all the student names on them. I prepared the chart with happy or sad faces and I laminated it. At the beginning I did a vertical chart but, because I have nearly 60 kids, the clothes pins didn't fit in it... :( so I had to add two ears to the green (the more common) color.