Halloween, Murcielagos (Bats), Dia de los Muertos, y mucho mas!!!!!

We just finished learning about Firefighters (bomberos) and the kids had a blast learning about "Stop, Drop, and Roll".  We also watched this video at the end of the day about Fire Safety!

I am excited for this upcoming week! I love teaching about bats, Dia de los Muertos, and doing all sorts of Halloween/Fall activities with the class.  On Wednesday, I am planning a fall festival where the kiddies will make Halloween puppets, play Fall Bingo, and practice counting using candy corn and Frankenstein!!!!  
We are also going to study bats this week, also known as murcielagos. After the class completes the activities, I will post the pics!
Also on the agenda-Fact Families, nouns and adjectives, and story structure! I have been finding a lot of great FREE (love FREE stuff) on teacherspayteachers.com and pinterest! I wish I was creative enough to create some of these great activities and worksheets! Time would also be nice....LOL
To all of these amazing and creative teachers that are helping us out-YOU ROCK!! Thanks!!!!

To top it all off, we are also preparing for Hurricane Sandy!! Yikes! Hope we don't lose power!! =(

Stay safe everyone!!

Alyson Hennessy

Calabazas!!!

This week, we used our "5 sentidos" to practice being "cientificos".  The students had a blast learning all about "calabazas".  We read "Tiempo de calabazas" and created the pumpkin life cycle.  We also did rhyming pumpkins, a pumpkin glyph, and counted all of the  "semillas" inside the pumpkins! We had a medium and a small pumpkin and all together, we had 563 seeds!! I took the seeds home, mixed them in butter and cinnamon and baked them at 300 degrees.  The kids thought they tasted like popcorn! I also brought in pumpkin pie and they thought it was "sweet" and "delicious".  Our next plan is to actually plant a pumpkin seed inside one of the pumpkins.  We dug out all of the inside and seeds of the pumpkin and we want to see what happens if we plant the seed.

(For some reason my pics are not uploading-I will try again this weekend-Sorry!)
We also read "Officer Buckle and Gloria".  I introduced how to use post-its and the class created their own safety rules.


In the upcoming weeks, I am planning to do Community Helpers, Fire Safety, Sink/Float, Flat Stanley/maps, and am also going to work with my class parents to plan a Fall Festival Celebration! What do you do for your fall celebrations?? In the past, I have brought in food but I have a few allergies this year so I plan on doing a few arts and craft stations and Fall bingo!  I love the Fall!!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! I have some grading to do, work for my Masters class, and on Sunday, I am doing the Breast Cancer walk in honor of a family friend! Let's find a cure for all cancers!


Adios amigos!

Alyson Hennessy

A great website for Spelling practice! And some other odds and ends...

I found this great website that is great for weekly Spelling practice!

www.spellingcity.com

It is free, or you can upgrade to the premium package to allow the students access to different activities.

You sign up and upload your spelling list each week and the students can then practice.  My students today showed me Hang Mouse, which is a game similar to Hangman, with the spelling words!

Right now, I just have the basic package but I would love to eventually upgrade because you can then keep track of student work and progress. For now, I have the students' parents sign their homework sheet.


On a different note, I love how enthusiastic my class is about learning a second language! They love watching videos on YouTube and singing the songs! Their favorite right now is this one!

They sing it all the time!! It is great also because it helps with the syllables.  

They also love this alphabet song in English-

I also have to say here that I love PINTEREST and I just want to say thank you to all of those great creative minds that share and create these ideas!  

For those of you out there who use Treasures/Tesoros, I created 2 poems for Unit 1, Week 1 to go with the theme-We are Special.  For Spanish- A mi me gusta  For English-The cat

The CatU1W1 amimegustaU1W1

So excited for Pumpkins this week! And next week, we start to do Community Helpers, with a focus on Fire Fighters for Fire Safety! I love doing thematic units with my class!
Have a great week everyone!!

Alyson Hennessy

Wow, did I feel old today!

The students made me feel really old today =(
With the TREASURES series, we have a read aloud anthology about Alexander Graham Bell and the students learn what a non fiction story is and also what a biography is.  As we read the story, we discussed the word invented and what it means.
Today, we revisited the text but I also showed the brainpopjr.com video about Alexander Graham Bell http://www.brainpopjr.com/socialstudies/biographies/alexandergrahambell/

We discussed the word invention again and to help them get a better understanding of the word, I told them that when I was in 1st grade, there were no EnoBoards, iPads, iPhones, or laptops!  Their mouths were hanging open in shock!  Then, one of my students said, "Was there electricity?"  I almost died laughing!!!!!! The class had a lot of fun discussing different inventions and what kind of invention they would create.

For Social Studies, we have been discussing the different types of families and houses and drawing our family with the appropriate labels.  I will post pictures of finished products next week.

For Science next week, I am planning to do a pumpkin study.  I go a lot of great resources from Pinterest and other great blogs to help the students observe pumpkins in the classroom and we will also create a pumpkin glyph.


Pumpkin Glyph Here is the letter that I sent home to the parents.


Pumpkin Taste Testing Letter
For those of you who use Treasures/Tesoros, here are labels that I have for my FOCUS wall in English and Spanish.


Mainstage Labels ENGLISH

Here are the Spanish labels.

Mainstage Labels SPANISH

Here is my HW format for the month...Obviously the words change weekly and I do change the Spanish HW because I usually have to create my own.


Word Activities for OCTOBERU1W1

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of the week and the long weekend!
Can't wait! My official date to receive tenure is October 10th!!! T-minus 6 days!  Yay!!!
Happy teaching!

Alyson Hennessy