Our Christmas Presents

Today was my first day off and I spent it at the mall (not my favorite place). I stopped at 9:30 for a minute of silence for all the victims of last week's tragedy. Many tears and prayers for everyone who has been affected.

Since hubby is at work, I get to blog :)

Take a look at our Christmas presents. 

I will let the pictures do the talking:

Wishing for snow!  

Share Your Opinion!

On Monday, I began teaching Opinion Writing and all I can say is...it was A-mazing!!!   I guess we had been doing narrative writing for too long, because the kids rocked it. I am sure they were glad to try something new.

I decided to talk about something the kids were familiar with: Their favorite book character.

I wrote about him :)

On Tuesday,  I was observed (unannounced). The kids had created their hook and shared their opinions by then. We supported our opinion with facts and details.

Some of the charts we created.

The last picture is the final product .

My post observation went extremely well. I was very pleased with the grades and comments given by our interim principal.

I took it step by step. Modeled one thing at a time. Kids wrote. We shared. We edited. Repeat. Their first drafts were beyond fantastic!
We will do some editing, revising and write a final copy tomorrow. The rest of the week I have a variety of topics for them to practice with. After that, they get to use their brainstorming list we created on Monday.

In order to teach Opinion Writing, I created this product.

I love it. I really, really love it! I did some tweaking after teaching it. I did not wanted to put it out there without trying it out. Thanks to my amazing bloggy friend for reviewing this for me.

If my kids can write as well as they did, so can yours :) Find it HERE. 

Time to pick  someone who could LOVE this as much as I do.
Let's see... if you guess what my hubby does for a living I will send it to you for free!  I love guessing, don't you?  I think only one person who knows me personally can answer this. We will give her a serious talk if she spoils my guessing game. LOL.
Tiny hint: He wears a uniform to work.  Start guessing!

A Flat Estimation Jar?!

Raise your hand if you have ever used a flat estimation jar. Here, here!...(this is me raising my own hand).

The whole idea began with a small collection of  ... confetti!

They are organized using small Gerber containers. Gerber peaches are my favorite. Yum!

I used them to create a two dimensional estimation jar. 

This is how it works: I pick a handful of confetti. I project the confetti. My students estimate. We use sticky notes to organize our data using post-its. We decide how we are counting our data (by 2's, 5's, 10's). We find who got closest to the actual number and record it on our estimation books. We are making a book with the estimation of the month.

The kids LOVE it!  They keep begging me to get more confetti. I need to go shopping :)

But of course you can continue to use your 3 dimensional estimation jar.

Raise your hand if you'd like to try that? 

This is when you raise your hand and visit my TPT store to check this new product. 

If you are the first one to estimate how big my family is (cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents...) back home in Mexico City, you'll get it for free.

Red and Blue

Our school had a two hour delay yesterday. I did as much as I could since I had to eat lunch with the kids in my classroom and did not have specials :(

I had Election Day activities so our day ended being really short and productive.

We started with a class conversation about each candidate. I then typed their statements and created a chart.

Each student received a ballot. We created graphs to display our data and used a map to color five blue states and five red states.

We then created If I Were President posters.

Today I watched a little bit of the acceptance speech and we wrote congratulation letters to the president.

Here is to no more campaign commercials!  :)

Halloween Pics.

How was your day yesterday? I am trying my hardest to stay away from the pantry :)  I need willpower!

At home, we had a cute Rapunzel that refused to wear a wig (I have always wanted a blond baby) and a hockey player. My kids' school starts at 7:20...let me tell you, it was super hard to get up this morning.

At school, we had a great day! I am going to let the pictures do the talking :)

We also read The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. Our awesome PenPals sent us the book. Thanks Jaime! We then used it to add one more choice for our Respond to Reading chart.

There were cupcakes, juices, popcorn, munchkins, goodie bags, and masks.

Friday... I am sooooo ready for you.