Fall Session Week 3

Kindergarten Spanish:

This week we talked about the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. Students learned that even though it has a scary name, it is not a scary holiday and it is not Halloween event though it takes place around the same time of year. Day of the Dead is a time when families remember and celebrate loved ones who have died. An ofrenda, or altar, is built in the house with pictures, candles, marigolds, special foods and items that pertained to the deceased. Although there are skeletons everywhere, they are not scary. Instead, the images are of skeletons enjoying the things they did when they are alive such as dancing, playing sports, playing music, etc. Children get calaveras, sugar skulls, that show that death is just a part of life and life is sweet. Special sweet bread is made in circular shapes to show the circle of life. In the classroom we made sugar skulls and talked about our own family traditions. Here are some pictures from Mrs. Waddell's class-hope all the calaveras made it home in one piece!

B1-2 Technology:

We combined a healthy food/food pyramid discussion with Halloween by listening to a Tumblebook story about The Lima Bean Monster. After that, we cut out and assembled out Pumpkin Math minibooks made from last week's powerpoint manipulation and spent any leftover time on Education City, our wonderfully engaging new skill review program which the kids seem to really enjoy!

3-4 Technology:

Our monsters are uploaded and we are excited to receive our partner descriptions and see their redraws. This week we watched a tumblebook called Frank Was A Monster Who Wanted To Dance and then made a skeleton dance on the cool interactive skeleton. We watched a short Brainpop movie to learn more about our skeletal system and then tried to Put Annie Back Together. Finally, the kids had fun uploading a class picture into the free photo editing site Picnik where they turned their fellow students into monsters with stickers and effects.