Mothers' Day

Ideas, ideas and more ideas for one of the most important dates if the year... All of them taken from Pinterest, of course!

Here they are...

Crafts...

Bulletin boards...

I hope you enjoyed the ideas! Let's have some fun!

Ways of preparing food

We ( me and my partner Jorge) wanted to teach our 5th graders vocabulary related to food preparation. To do so, we needed to use the school kitchen, which was fully scheduled today. Having to teach this lesson, we had to come up with a solution. We went to the kitchen and got some pans, tray and food. But what about the stove? No problem! Jorge can draw very well, so we decided that he would be in charge of the it. He drew a very fancy one on the teacher's table. And the result was...

Students loved the idea of cooking on a fake stove. We did what we were up to and students had lots of fun!

18 craft ideas for Easter

Isn't it amazing that we are already preparing ourselves for Easter? Yes, we are! And I found many simple and interesting projects you can do with your little ones... Many of them I found on Pinterest. Some others, I simply googled...

Check this out:

To please our students...

To decorate our classrooms...

Bulletin boards...

Did you like the ideas? So... Hands on!

An unforgettable moment...

My daughter is turning 10 on Saturday. All of a sudden, I noticed that she's growing too fast... In some days, she is going to be a pre-teenager and I'm going to lose my baby... Forever... Time passes by too fast and the only thing we have are the memories. My daughter's teacher, Vanessa Araujo, understood the necessity of etching memories on students' heart in and she did that in a way that touched us (both students and parents) profoundly... 

During a parents' meeting conference, she gave us a piece of cloth and asked us to write a message for our little ones. She explained that as it would be a surprise for them, it would be very convenient if we didn't tell them anything.

Having written that, I confess I didn't expect what was to come. She made a patchwork bedspread with all the messages.  This is the result...

In the first class right after vacation, she showed students their parents' messages. Many students cried as they read the messages. Others thanked her for having the opportunity to know how loved they are. The important is that even for nine-year-old children it was a very touching moment.  This is certainly one of the most beautiful classroom activities I have ever seen. The lesson taught at that day became an unforgettable  moment students will never forget, not only for the messages they received themselves, but also for all the joy and emotion of their friends. As Vanessa says "what you (students) have, nobody can take of you". After this wonderful lesson, I think that for the next children's day I'm going to give my students much more than candies and stickers... I'm going to give them memories...

My version of the same idea

For my first day of class, I decided to use the sunglasses project. I prepared a whole class for this simple project and I'd like to share it with you...

Material needed: one paper sunglasses per student, scissors, colored pencil. 

Preparation in advance: Take some flash cards or a PowerPoint  presentation with pictures related to vacation to the classroom.

Time: 60 minutes

I welcomed students and asked them to sit on a circle on the floor. Then, I showed them my paper sunglasses, very similar to this one...

By the way, This one, as I mentioned before, I took from Pinterest. 

So, I invited them to guess what  I did during my vacation. After that, I told them they were supposed to draw something nice that had happened to them during their vacation. But they couldn't tell anybody about it, since they would play a guessing game. 

After 20 minutes drawing and coloring things, I worked with vocabulary. 

I created this "page" on an Ipad app named Popplet. It has a free version (that you can only create one vocabulary cloud) and a paid one. I usually use this app to work with vocabulary, but I know there are many other uses of it. It's worthy downloading it. Take a look at the one I created for this class...

It took me less than 5 minutes to make it I elicited vocabulary and drilled pronunciation. To consolidate the new structures, I played a hot potato and a miming game.

When I felt students were familiar with the new vocabulary, I played the guessing game. In two groups, students discussed about their vacation. Then, student from group A showed his /her sunglasses to group B. Students from group B had to guess what he/she did during his/her vacation.

To wrap up, after playing this game, students were invited to write a paragraph about their vacation. The sunglasses and the paragraph will certainly become a bulletin board which pictures I post later! 

I hope you enjoyed this class!

Ideas for the first week of class

Starting a new semester is not an easy task. I've been looking for ideas and I'd like to share with you some of the best projects ideas I found on Pinterest. I hope you like it!

This is a getting-to-know-you project! 

In advance, teacher cuts the students' profiles.

Students are to cut from a magazine or draw things they like and paste on their profiles. Then, in pairs or in groups, the class try to find out what the pictures are about. I think it is a really nice activity for the first day of class!

Another very nice project I found on Pinterest was "We were looking back on summer, this is what we see". Take a look...

This is a variation of the same project...

Students are to draw what they did during vacation. Then, the class can have a very nice conversation about it. Did you like it?

Another very cute idea...

Students draw things  they did during vacation again... But now, using colored chalk on a black sheet of paper... How about this?

Let's welcome students? This is what I found to make it possible...

Some ideas to start a very nice semester!

Break a leg!

Revising the semester

Last week of class... I wanted my students to revise all vocabulary and content we learned during the semester. I  was looking for a different activity when a student came to class holding a huge letter... My class was ready! I asked my students to open their books and hands on... This is the result!

Did you like it?