"Meesss, It's The Day Of Loooooooove!"

That was their words, not mine. Just to clear things up. 

I like to see my boys squirm and nothing makes them squirm more than hugs, hearts, and the color pink. So I made sure that February was chock full of all things Valentine's Day. Including, but not limited to, our bulletin board...

...our Spelling activities...

...and our Reading Buddies crafts. 

The big day finally arrived and since I'm a heartless teacher, I made my kids take a Spelling test before diving into the Valentine's Day activities. I regret nothing.

In Grade Two, the kids traced their hands on some construction paper, accordion folded a strip in between, and wrote "I love you this much!" on a pretty pink heart. Nailed it. Way to go, love bugs.

I also busted them sharing the love at snack time. They pooled their snacks together to create an entirely new snack-- chocolate pudding and cheese whiz on a tortilla chip. I taste tested, it wasn't great.

Grade One voted on Thursday what they wanted to do during their party. They were able to choose from making a tree out of their hands and then using hearts for the leaves, making a monkey with accordion arms and legs, or making animals out of hearts. The animals out of hearts won and I spent all of Thursday evening designing heart animals, printing hearts, sorting hearts, and making examples. Phew.

They did great! It's hard for me to give up control because I want their things to look perfect, but I also have to remember that they're 6 and not always able to cut on a perfect line. It's okay, the world will not end. We do have a good system of cutting, gluing, and throwing away that we've been working on all year. They're old pros at it now and it definitely make things run so much smoother. Which is one less worry for their poor, control freak of a teacher.

And then I spent some time after school with my brown eyed girls. 

I had 48 Valentines this year, and then some. How did I ever get this lucky?

Parcial One and Done

The beginning of November also marked the end of Parcial One, as well as the 50th day of school. We wrapped up our exhilarating units on living things and pronouns with the hope of more exciting units ahead. Spent some time cleaning up the classroom under the guise of getting all the bad germs out because Miss Caitlin is persuasive and tricky like that.

In Grade One Science the kids had to identify a living thing and then create it out of construction paper and then we pasted it onto our "Tree of Life". Holla at all the scientists in Grade One.

Grade One Language included creating their own word walls. Wahoo. As a culminating activity, each student was assigned a letter and then had to come dressed representing that letter and present a short memorized sentence. Super precious. Check out them cuties.

 

In Grade Two Language we became gardeners and created our own Pronoun Gardens. I also can't figure out how to rotate the picture, so you have to deal with that. They had to write a pronoun in the yellow center and then write an example on each petal. Some of us have green thumbs and some of us do not.



 Parcial One-- that's a wrap.

Settling In To Our New Normal.

Tomorrow starts week six. In the first five weeks we've celebrated Día del Niño, marched in the parade, practiced for the parade, learned routines and classroom procedures, and managed to squeeze in a little bit of actual learning. Stress on the little bit.

Independence Day Parade.

Independence Day Parade.

Please. Don't look so excited.

Día del Niño.

The kids, as usual, are fantastic. A little bit challenging, slightly difficult to understand, and sometimes a bit cranky, but always fantastic. 

It seems that a lightbulb has switched on for Grade Two in the past week and the amount of English they have begun speaking has increased exponentially. It isn't even comparable to stepping into a classroom in the States, but I'd say that about 75% of us are speaking English about 50% of the time. Which is an improvement. 

Grade One continues to blow me away at how SMART they are! I'm still not exactly sure what to do with them. We'd been learning about how the sun is a star, the earth is a planet, and the moon is a satellite. Miss Caitlin is not an artist, so when I drew the moon, it had more resemblance to a banana. For the next couple of weeks I had all the students proclaiming that the sun is a star and the moon is a really big banana.

While life in Honduras is rarely ever dull, it quickly becomes routine for me and it always seems like there's less and less to report. Outside of school hours, I lead a pretty regular, boring life. I grocery shop, I get my hair cut, I cheer on my Tribe every night. Being a teacher here isn't much different from being a teacher in the States. Except the food labels at the grocery store are in Spanish, my hair dresser doesn't speak English, and I have to listen to Tom Hamilton on the radio as opposed to actually being at the Jake.

Just another day in the life.

The Differences Between Grade One and Two.

I adore my Grade Twos. Absolutely adore them. We worked so. hard. to get to this point. We traveled to hell and back together last year. You think I'm exaggerating, but you weren't there. They were a tough, little bunch. And their teacher was a real stickler, as well.

But they're some of my favorite little kiddos in school and I look forward to seeing their faces every morning.

That being said, this year's Grade One class is a complete 180 from the Grade Twos. When I tell Grade One to be quiet, they actually do it. I tell them not to touch something and 20 of the 23 of them won't touch it. It's all still a little bit weird to me. Awesome. But weird.

Since we aren't spending quite as much time correcting behavior (ie: no one is stabbing anyone else with a pencil), we have so much more time to do fun things. Like crafts. (I prefer the word in Spanish, manualidad, as opposed to craft. Craft makes it sounds frivolous. Manualidad makes it sound like there's a purpose.) We're focusing on reviewing the letters in Language class and spend one day per letter. The kids already learned their letters in Kinder and Prepa, so we're just reviewing. This week we covered letters A-D. Check out our super cute manualidad for letter D.

I know, I know. Right?! Too adorable to even handle. I can't take credit for the idea, I found it somewhere on Pinterest. But I can, and will, take credit for adding the duck habitat to the back. Gotta add science in there when ya can, right?

Oh Grade One. The possibilities are endless with you this year and I can't even wait to see what shenanigans we can get ourselves into.

A Bulletin Board For Every Season.

Or at least a bunch of bulletin boards for the end of the year.

I've been blessed with lots and lots of bulletins boards in my classroom, as well as a huge wall in the back that is perfect for displaying student work.

Sometimes I'm really slacking on my bulletin board and my room ends up looking like one giant corkboard. Other times, like now, it actually looks like a real classroom.

We're currently sporting two seasonal bulletins (both counting down the days until summer) as well as one that's been up for a little bit longer.

We've got a working bulletin board with a library pocket for each student. Inside each pocket is an index card. At various times throughout the school year, we write a journal on the index card as opposed to writing in our journals. I provide the prompt and when the students are finished writing, they put the card into the pocket with their picture. The students can then read other students responses during centers or when there is extra time. Our working bulletin board was a big hit when we were talking about Dr. Seuss and each student had to write about their favorite Dr. Seuss book. Ironically, book recommendations are way cooler when they come from your friend as opposed to your teacher.

Our countdowns to summer are probably my favorite parts of my classroom right now. And not because we're counting down the days, but because I actually like the way that they look.

"Don't be and Angry Bird! Only _____ days until summer!" And the student helper of the day gets to write how many days left on the little Angry Bird. The student helper of the day also gets to pop one of the Bad Piggies balloons each day to reveal an special activity. Things like "write in marker instead of pencil", etc.

Our second countdown to summer and seasonal bulletin board includes a paper chain, a balloon rainbow, and pictures of each student wearing sunglasses. The bulletin board says "Our future is so bright, we have to wear shades!" and each student got to wear Miss Caitlin's sunglasses for a picture. We're pretty big on displaying pictures of the students in the classroom, as well as their work. After all, it's their classroom too.

And lastly, we had a little Language activity at the culmination of our unit on verbs. The students colored a picture of an Angry Bird and then had to write a sentence including a verb on it. They LOVED it. LOVED. It. As long as I make anything related to Angry Birds, the students will pay attention. Definitely something to consider for next year.

Miss Caitlin learned a valuable lesson in bulletin board making this year-- a border can make or break the whole bulletin board. You would think it doesn't. But it does.

Happy Valentine's Day!

February 14. Valentine's Day. A holiday that you either love or hate, I have yet to meet anyone who is just neutral about Valentine's Day. If you aren't keen on the idea of a holiday centered solely around love and hearts and gooey things, maybe you'd love the Spanish take on it. Día de amor y amistad-- day of love and friendship.

Dia de Amistad with these crazy kids? Yes please.

We started out this holiday season with our "John 3:16" bulletin board.

        "For God

                  so loved the world

                       that He gave His

                      only

               begotten

                      son so

                         that whoever

                    believes

                        in Him shall

                   have everlasting

                                 life."

Followed by many talks about how God is our very best valentine.

Our Valentine's Day craft.

Multiple reading buddy classes were spent creating various valentines and telling people reasons why we love them. We really focused on verbalizing our feelings of appreciation for each other as well as making sure our actions mirrored our words. Trust me, there were many, many discussions to be had about loving each other.

Crosswords. Please note this concentration.

The big day finally arrived and the students came to school ready to party. Ropa de color and everything. I spent the morning with my Grade Two's and we spent the first two classes doing our real work-- Language and Reading class. Let me tell you, one would have thought that I had 21 students all getting root canals. They were so unhappy to be having to do "real work". The 8:50 recess bell rang and the students went crazy knowing that the rest of the day was a party.

Mr. Cristian came to play with Grade Two.

Enter the room after recess and we filled the rest of the morning with Valentine's Day crosswords, Kiss the Lips on Miss Valentine, and soem heart related crafts. Lunchtime was spent chowing down on Pizzeria Cantonese and pastel. Enter-- sugar high.

Games with Grade Five.

After recess, I had the joy of hanging out with my rambuctious Grade One's. I lined them up and sent them up to Mr. Cristian's room. Grade Five's came down to hang out with me and we played about fifteen minutes of games before we rotated again and Grade Four graced me with their presence. We enjoyed fifteen minutes of random games before our final switch.

Girls versus Boys race in Grade Four.

Grade One's came back and we played some Bingo before heading outside to blow off some steam. Which quickly went sour because Mr. Cristian was having a water balloon/ water gun fight with his Grade Four's and I made my students watch. Worst. Teacher. Ever. I got lots of nasty comments including being called "Señora Aburrida". All afternoon. Especially when the Grade Four's doused me with some water, I shot them with some water guns, and I still made my students stand back and watch. Señora Aburrida, in the house.

Grade Four water fight.

Mr. Cristian versus Senora Aburrida. Holla.

Awfully unimpressed with me.

Lauren's class of Grade Five's met us in the comedor for our last class and led us in some wonderful games of Duck, Duck, Goose, Simon Says, Follow the Leader, and Red Light, Green Light. 23 out of 25 of my students LOVE hanging out with the big kids and were having the best time with the Grade Five's. The other two? Well, they were spending quality time with Miss Caitlin. In the classroom.

Elementary English staff.

And there you have it, my Happy Valentines Day 2013.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas.

Christmas has slowly started taking over CEE. All of the classroom doors are decorated with various Christmas paraphernalia, as well as the comedor and library. Sarah's gone all out decorating each of her classroom and, not to be left out, we've done our fair share of decorating in Grade 1 and 2.

Grade 2 got the ball rolling by decorating paper Christmas ornaments and hanging them on the Christmas tree on our giant bulletin board. We also colored Christmas stockings that are now hanging throughout the classroom. Just to lift our holiday spirits some more, we did all this while listening to Christmas music. Which included listening to "Feliz Navidad" on repeat. Over and over and over again. Just a little bilingual fun at the bilingual school.

Grade 1 quickly followed suit by making paper plate snow globes and strings of paper Christmas lights with their names written on them. They've been begging me to decorate Christmas stockings and Christmas ornaments, so that's on this week's agenda.

Reading Buddies has been a HUGE part of our Christmas festivities as they've really helped my kiddos with all their Christmas crafts.

Each day we read a little bit of the Christmas story and then talk about the real meaning of Christmas. No presents here, these kids are all about Jesus. And fireworks. Christmas and fireworks go hand in hand down here in Honduras.

Our Christmas party is coming up this week and I just cannot wait to celebrate with my Grade 2's. As much as we all love each other, we're all ready for a break.

Dive In And Explore Grade One And Two!

Pretty catchy title, huh? It works wonderfully for my underwater bulletin board and my sad attempt to have an underwater themed classroom.

I know it's hard to believe, but I am actually living in Honduras because I am working here. I'm not just here taking a nice little vacation, hanging out with friends, and traveling on the weekends. But I promise you-- my Monday through Friday is a whole different sort of enjoyable.

My Grade Ones are improving each and every day. They can now recite our class rules to me without any prompting-- thank the Lord. We're working on actually being able to follow the class rules, but as of this week, they have been able to tell me that I moved their clip down because they broke rule number 3. While I'm not a fan of how I'm a slave to the clip chart these days, it's working for my kiddos, so I'll put it up with it.

Grade Twos and I are kind of at a stand-still right now. We aren't doing terrible, but we certainly aren't on a roll or anything. Between the cold temperatures and overcast skies and the fact that Christmas vacation is just too far out of reach to be able to count down to it, we're all a little antsy. Their attention spans are short and my patience is even shorter. We're making it work, but no one is absolutely loving it.

I feel like I say this every time I talk about what is going on at school, but there is ALWAYS so much going on! In the month of Novemeber we had the CEE Anniversary, the Spelling Bee, a couple different birthday parties, and some fun activities in Grade One.

Since pictures can explain these events better than words can, I've uploaded some of the winning shots for your viewing pleasure.

CEE Anniversary

The Spelling Bee

Grade One Science

Meet Your Teacher: Miss Casavecchia

Throughout the past school year and summer, I have acquired many different ideas for things that I just had to have in my classroom. Thanks a lot, Pinterest. One of these things that I absolutely couldn't live without was a "Meet Your Teacher" book. I got the idea from a first year teacher who had posted on Pinterest, but then tailored it to fit my needs and personality. I highlighted each of my years in elementary school, then briefly talked about middle school, high school, and college. The last couple pages are pictures of my family, my travels, my favorite things, and some books that I just adore. I haven't exactly decided what to do with it yet, but I'm toying with the idea of reading it on the first day of school and then doing some get to know you activity. We'll see.

And there you have it. Mees Casa summed up in a three ring big book.