Exciting new lessons, Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day....

Hola padres! I am so sorry for my lack of posting last week as with field day things got a little thrown off kilter. I was so glad to be able to spend field day with the scholars though! The water games were so fun to watch and I had heard so much about the pirate ship game, it was so fun to finally see it in action. And of course, how can you forget the teacher tug of war games? They are always a favorite!

So let me fill you in on what we have been up to. In first and Kinder we have finally finished the alphabet and the scholars are so excited! The last few letters of the alphabet are a bit more difficult to pronounce than the others, so we have been doing lots of review and practice to solidify those for them. This week we have also integrated some color and number bingo to help review those concepts as well.

In all grades next week, we will be doing a special project of a mother's day card so please be on the lookout for those to come home. Toward the end of the week our schedule changes a bit with grade level concert practices happening so with the classes that I do have we will be discussing Cinco de Mayo and its significance to Mexico.

In third grade this month, we have been studying the country of Paraguay. It has been an exciting lesson as we have learned about the Landfill Harmonic from Cateura, Paraguay, a student orchestra from one of the poorest parts of Paraguay that has learned to perform Mozart and Beethoven on instruments built out of recycled materials from the landfill their town sits next to. It is an amazing story of hope and courage. I showed the students two videos and encourage you to see the documentary entitled Landfill Harmonic. I have not seen it myself but would like to soon. Here is the link for the movie:

http://www.landfillharmonicmovie.com/

For those of you who missed it, I wanted to post again the link for the Panama Canal expansion:
http://micanaldepanama.com/expansion/
I have been so impressed with the scholars who have brought information in! I am so glad they have wanted to dig deeper and find out more. We have so enjoyed learning about this together.

Lastly, in second grade the scholars have been learning about segregation. This has tied in beautifully with our study also of Roberto Clemente, the first Hispanic baseball player inducted into the Baseball  Hall of Fame. The scholars brought up the similarities of his struggles of segregation and the struggles of Jackie Robinson's. I am so glad when our lessons integrate like this and am so glad to see the connetions the scholars make.

Until next week,
Sra. Hamilton

the Panama Canal Expansion, el alfabeto sheet and a way to keep up this summer

Hola padres! What a fun week this week as our second and third grade classes have looked at the progress of the Panama Canal expansion project. For those classes this year we have read the book, "What is the Panama Canal?". At the end of the book, we learned that it was decided that the Panama Canal needed to be expanded to accommodate bigger ships that wanted to pass through. The expansion was to have been completed in 2015. Due to unforeseen problems, the expansion has been delayed and is set to open in June of this year. There is a great website dedicated to the entire project with live webcams, a detailed 5 minute video that chronicles the expansion project and also the latest press releases. http://micanaldepanama.com/expansion/ We watched the video in class, took a peek at the webcams and talked about the different challenges that today's expansion might face in comparison to the original construction over 100 years ago. I encourage you to check the website out this summer as the inauguration nears in June. It is so exciting that what we have studied in class this year is so relevant today!

For kinder and first this week, I have passed out a handout on the pronunciation of the Spanish alphabet so that you would have a better idea of what we have been doing this year. It would be great if scholars could review it in the weeks to come as well as over the summer. We continued the study of fruits this week and also learned how to play "I Spy" in Spanish. The scholars really had fun with this!

If you are looking for a way for your scholar to review or continue their learning Spanish through the summer, my recommendation is the free app duolingo. This is a great app that adapts to the level of the student, is fun and practices review as well as introduces new material. Please check it out for your scholar!

Please let me know if you have any questions. Have a great weekend!
Sra. Hamilton

the final quarter!

Hola padres! I am again, sorry for the late post; last week got away from me!! So now we have had a couple of weeks with the new curriculum and it is going well! I am discovering new aspects of it daily and the scholars are enjoying it. Much of what we have done so far has been review, but as we continue, we will come upon new material which will challenge them more. For right now, the lessons are good review of our units on la familia, greetings and amigos.

For kinder and first, we have taken a bit of a break from our alphabet this week and have learned about la fruta. Yesterday or today, they should have come home with a booklet about la fruta that I asked them to read to a family member. This is just a fun little way for them to practice and share what they have learned. We will continue with the alphabet next week; we are almost done!!

Have a wonderful weekend!
Sra. Hamilton