The Last Week Before Break....AKA Holidays Around The World

My school is very big on teaching kids about what other cultures and countries are out there.  The last week of school before break the kids travel to eight different "countries" to learn about their holiday season.  This is the rotation my class followed.

Monday-Ms. Casey's 3rd Grade: Brazil-One thing the kids learned about was how Brazil celebrates Christmas and they don't have snow in their country so the locals will put cotton on their tree to make it look like snow.  The kids made trees with cotton.
              Mrs. Rivera Kindergarten:China-The students learned about how the Chinese celebrate New Years.  The kids ended their session by making paper lanterns.
Tuesday-Ms. Lohmar's Kindergarten: Germany-The students learned about Saint Nicholas and played games from the country.
              Ms. Wall's 1st Grade: Mexico-I'm not sure all the information they learned but they made cute stained class ornaments.  They also learned how to sing "Feliz Navidad."
Wednesday-Mr. Nick's 1st Grade: For the life of me I can't think of what country he taught =)
Thursday-Mrs. Miller's Kindergarten: France-While in France my students learned new information about their Christmas and learned a Christmas carol in French.
               Mrs. Kuzemka's Second Grade:England-Mrs. Kuzemka spent some time teaching in England so she always does this country.  They talked about their Christmas and made crowns.
Friday-Mrs. Papet's Second Grade (Me): Puerto Rico (where I went on my honeymoon).  In my class we learned about how they celebrate New Years.  We learned a little bit about the country, some of their holiday traditions like eating the twelve grapes before midnight, food they eat, we learned how to do a children's dance called rueda, and we ate arroz con dulce. 

It was a fun week for all!!!

Math Week!!!

The last two weeks were very eventful.  Two weeks ago we had math week.  On Monday, we started our "Around The Calculator" rotations.  Around the Calculator is when one class switches for math with two other classes to learn a math concept.  My class started with me and we learned about symmetry.  Day two we continued "Around the Calculator."  My class went to a 1st grade class to make elf glyphs.  The 1st grade teacher made an ordinary elf glyph and adjusted it to include math.  On day three, my class went to the other 1st grade class to play some math games.  On Thursday, Second grade had their math vocabulary parade.  A week before the event we made a giant list of all the math vocabulary words we had learned this school year.  The kids then drew one of them out of my bucket.  Their job was to make a costume that explained what the word meant.  This idea was based off of the children's book "Miss Alainius: A Vocabulary Disaster."  I posted some of my favorites.  They all did great.  My teaching partner and I dressed up as the minute and hour hand on a clock.  The kids voted on two kids from each class to represent our grade at assembly on Friday.  On Friday, Second grade got back together for "Second Grade Math Jeopardy."

Telling Time In 5 Minute Intervals

Today was our second day tellng time to the 5 minutes.  I'm happy to report we are doing really well.  Today we made these clocks I found on pinterest.com.  These worked so great.  The kids glued the 5 minute incrimate clocks onto the paper plate.  Then they glued the actual clock on top of the other clock.  The tricky part was only glueing the top clock in the middle.  Our math curriculum has the kids practice with the hour hand and the minute hand being blue and red.  Afterwards, they went over the top numbers with a red color pencil and then the minutes with a blue color pencil.  That way when they read the clock it matched the hand they read it with.  To read the minutes you just pop open the flap the minute hand was pointing to.  What a fun activity!