Happy New Year!

I have been so busy since my last post that I was not able to tell you all the fun things my students did before our Christmas break!

For our Christmas around the World Unit we learned about Mexico, Germany, Italy and Puerto Rico. We made crafts for each country, read stories, watched videos and compared each country making a table of content. It was fun! You can visist my Facebook page and find some pics!

Last night I was thinking about school again (no matter that I still have one more week off). I decided I am going to let my students set their goals for the New Year. At the same time I am going to review my expectations and talk a little bit about behavior. You know that after Christmas break sometimes you need to set the rules one more time!

So I decided to make a cute and fun craftivtiy that will help my little ones write their goals and have fun at the same time. I love to let my students write, so I try to make it fun all the time!

Here is a peek of the activity I made. I hope you like it too!

You can find this craftivity here

Have a Happy New Year!

Mynda

Christmas is here!!!

We are ready for Christmas!!!!

My students started to write their Santa's letter on Monday. Since then they have been writing draft after draft, but they finally got it done today. As you may know I love crafts, so I needed to add a craftivity to it!! Here you can see their final work. And of course, I decorated my hallway already!!!

Here is one of my students Santa's letter.

My Teacher Assistant helped me made this cute Santa last year!

A peek of my hallway!

You can find this cute craftivity and a Christmas Literacy Activity at my store!

English & Spanish Abbreviation Activity

Have fun!

Mynda

Famous Americans, turkeys and a present!

Teaching about famous Americans to a 7-year-old can be a challenge unless you make it fun.


My kiddos enjoyed learning about John Hancock, Thurgood Marshall, Abigail Adams, Amelia Earhart and Irma Rangel.

We started the week dividing the class in groups. Each group researched a famous person. On Tuesday, they used a graphic organizer to write important facts about that person.On Wednesday, the fun begun! 

Each group started typing their paper and started creating a figure of their famous person. On Thursday, they put one the last touches and on Friday, each group made a presentation! I was very impressed with their final work... It was great! Look at their final presentation...

Amelia Earhart

Famous Americans

We got ready for Thanksgiving and made our turkeys! I tweaked my original activity and made a graphic organizer, instead of a writing paper. I let my bilingual partners talked about how they celebrated Thanksgiving with their families. Later they completed a Venn Diagram about how their Thanksgiving are similar and different. Here you can take a look of their cute turkeys!

Now our hallways has a cute Fall decoration with our turkeys and scarecrows! 

You can find these two craftivities HERE and HERE! :)

I ended the week with a sweet surprise from one of my little friends! She made me this cute bracelet and really gave me a happy ending to my week!
I hope you had a great week too!

Mynda

Dia de los muertos and a little bit about Science

We celebrated "El dia de los muertos" at school with a parade! Dual Language students from PK to 4th grade decorated their "calaveras" and walked around the school to celebrate the day! 

Here are some pics....

Besides celebrating "El dia de los muertos", we also studied the states of matter (solid,  liquid and gas). They had fun learning how the states of matter have similar and different characteristics. 

They did a "matter hunt" around the classroom on Monday! They classified objects by solid , liquid and gas. Later in the week, we learned how a liquid can change its shapes depending on the container. Here is a pic of how they change the shape of a liquid ;).

By the end of the week we learned about gas. And the best way to show    that a gas occupies the entire space of a container is using a BALLOON! :)

This is how I did it.. I placed 3/4 cup of white vinegar into an empty plastic bottle. Then I added 2 teaspoons of baking soda into a balloon. I stretched the balloon over the mouth of the bottle keeping the balloon to the side of the bottle. I then pulled the balloon up straight over the bottle, allowing the baking soda to enter into the vinegar. Finally, I stepped back as the kids  watched the balloon get inflated with carbon dioxide. 

You can find more activities about states of matter HERE!

Have a great weekend!

Mynda

United States & Body Systems

Last week I was so busy at home that I didn't have a chance to share my activities with all of you. Now I am going to updated you with all the activities we worked on the last two weeks!

In Social Studies we learned about the United States. The kids learned about the flag, the pledge, the symbols of the United States, our first president and more!
Here are some pictures of their great work!

In Science we studied body systems. And it was a lot of fun! Every time we talked about a new organ you could see their faces with an amaze impression!
We started the week talking about the bones and they made this skeleton and label the bones.

Then we started the fun making their bodies! Each partner need it to create a boy or a girl and identify their organs and bones! It took the whole week, but their final product was great! They learned and had a lot of fun! Here are some pictures of their "buddy bodies"

You can find these fun activities HERE

and HERE

Have a great week!

Mynda

Healthy Food

Last week my students learned about healthy food, food groups, food pyramid and more! For this topic, you can find a lot of resources like this cute plate template in English & Spanish at http://www.choosemyplate.gov/.

My students had a lot of fun creating their "Healthy Food Tray," making sure they included something from each food group! They love it! Here is one of their trays!

We also talked about the importance of vegetables in a healthy diet. They made this cute craft called "My veggie" and wrote a menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

By Friday they were more friendly toward vegetables.
Some of them even dared to try them at home! For me that was a big success! 

This lesson not only created awareness among my students it also made me think about the kind of food that my family and I eat at home. Yikes!!! It's not always very healthy... :-(

You can find this cute activity HERE!

Everything is bigger in Texas!!!!

My students learned last week about our state TEXAS!!!! We had lots of fun studying about our state symbols: the bluebonnet, the Mockingbird, the Alamo, the capital, etc.  

If you want to teach Social Studies to 7 years old you NEED to make it FUN!!! Right? And that was exactly what my kids had the last week... lots of FUN!!!

We studied the map of Texas, locating the capital, its important cities and the surrounding states. 

We learned about Texas Symbols in a really cool way... the students decorated the clothes of cowboy they created with all the state symbols. They turned out super cute!!!

On Friday we "traveled" to Austin using a virtual tour. We visited the capitol. They loved it!!! How did I do it? Using the SenateKids website.

Later they created a book about everything they learned and their favorite things about our Lone Star State!

Visit my store to find this activity and a Fall FREEBIE! 

Have a nice week! :)

Healthy smiles

This week my students had lots of fun learning about dental health. 

 Our first activity was to observe how sugar can change the color of your teeth. We put an egg in a cup filled with soda for 20 minutes.

Later they were able to compare the difference between the tooth that had a lot of sugar and the one that just had water.They were very impressed with how one was way darker than the other!

                                              The solution .... BRUSH,BRUSH and BRUSH! 

 After their observations, they were able to identify all the different ways you can take care of your teeth to prevent cavities or decay (and a nasty brown color). And we did it using a very cute graphic organizer! ;)

                            We learned about flossing! The kids were able to floss after eating a bunch of peanut butter! Students used latex glove as teeth, then they flossed the peanut butter between each tooth (fingers). At the end of the lesson, most of them mastered the art of flossing! :)

We created an "apple smile" to review some vocabulary words like crown, enamel and gums. They had a lot of fun and learned all the vocabulary words in Spanish! For this activity: the apple are the lips, the caramel is the gum and the marshmallows are teeth.

By Friday, they were experts on how to take care of their teeth and how to have a healthy smile. ;)

You can find this cute writing craftivity HERE.

Now I have a class of future dentists! :)

Have a nice weekend!

Mynda

Communities

This week my students learned about communities and how to be good citizens. They had the most creative ideas of how to be a good citizen. They range from helping their parents wash their cars to making a campaign to save the planet! It was fun listening to their wonderful ideas! 

As part of the lesson, students drew themselves as a good citizen and wrote how they can achieve it. Here are some of their work....     

                                    

Also we compared the difference between urban, rural and suburban in a graphic organizer. Here you can tell they know Dallas is an example of urban. They loved the city!

                                         Visit my store to find more activities for this unit.

I hope you have a great week!

Germs, punctuation marks, Italian food and a baseball game!

I had a busy week! But it was worth it! 

At school I was teaching my students about germs and different ways to stay healthy. They came out with the funniest ways to stay healthy!!! Here is one of the activities we had and they love it! The idea of this activity is to show the kiddos how germs spread easily if we don't wash our hands properly.

                      

 Here you can see their hands full of germs (flour) and how they spread their germs to their friends!

We also learned about punctuation marks and sentences. I had to spend a lot of time reviewing punctuation marks and capital letters this past week!!! I came out with this activity to remind my students how important capital letters and punctuation marks are in a sentence! 

You can find this activity in English and Spanish HERE.

At home I was craving for an Italian plate, so I cook one of my favorites baked ziti. I learned this recipe from Rachel Ray... I love it! 

Finally I ended my week with my son's first baseball game! It was my first time in a Tee-Ball game and I am not sure what I love more ... My son's and his team running everywhere or my husband as an Assistant Coach!!! It was the best way to end my week!

I hope you all have a great week!

       Mynda