Day of the Dead and Haloween

The Day of the Dead Celebration!

Decorated Calaveras and Symmetry Pumpkins

Papel Picado

This is the Memory Box I made to honor for my father "Ernesto.
 My Dad was the best Father I could ever asked for.  I miss him a lot!

 Memory Box

 Grandparents Memories!

"Three Generations" Memory Box

I added some sugar skulls "Calaveras"

 "Uncle Tony" Memory Box

honoring  Grandpa with this cute  baby picture!

Pink Memory Box

A beautiful one to honor her Grandpa!

       r "Abueltito Octavio"

Time definitely flies! I can't believe its already January!! I apologize for abandoning my blog. You have no idea, but with all of these HISD and TEA requirements.... I'm going nuts! I've been so busy lately at school that I hadn't get a chance to post for a while. I took some pictures of the kiddos working on a project for The Day of the Dead back in November and I want to share them with you all. The Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos in Spanish is a traditional celebration in Mexico and other South and Central America Countries that started hundreds of years ago to honor the deceased family members and friends. Just a few years ago this tradition crossed the border and is now celebrated here in the USA as well. It's a very fun and colorful celebration that brings out the Mexican Folklore. The children in my class stayed one afternoon after school to work on their memory box project which is something similar to a small altar. We had a lot of fun making the tissue paper flowers and the calaveras. We also made papel picado wich is like cutting shapes on very thin paper. Well too much talking..... let's see some pictures now!

Famous People Wax Museum

The Famous People Wax Museum was a real success!
Thanks to the magnificent help of our terrific parents, our wax museum had a great turn out. The wax statues costumes were absolutely awesome! We had so many famous characters, Ramses II, Albert Einstein, Amelia Earnhardt, even the royalty: Queen Elizabeth, Thomas Edison, Anne Frank, and many more. I was very impressed not only with the children outfits, but with the creativity of the projects too. They were all interesting and we learned a great deal. Obviously the kids asked me and Mr. Raisback to do somebody too, so of course I chose someone easy guess who? Maria Montessori  He he he!! and Mr. Railsback was Pontius Pilate or Pontius Pilatus (Roman name) (Thank you so much to all of you for making it happen :) Here are some pictures enjoy!
Oh! By the way Shannon Hugetz has a membership with Shutterfly, it's a great website were you cab actually buy the pictures or albums at a very affordable price check it out here: http://mstorresclasspictures.shutterfly.com/
She has taken pictures from different events such us the Wizard of OZ class play, The 2011 Fall festival, The Famous People Wax Museum and she also had the pictures from the Pancake Breakfast cooking recipe book.
Thanks everyone!

On Task!

Working on Composing Numbers with Golden Beads

Doing Money Work

Girls composing numbers

Working on Fractions

Some Checker Board Multiplication

Alphabetizing words

Working on math facts

Concentrating in fractions

Of course we also have fun at recess time!!

At Dismissal Time waiting for their ride.

The A+ girls!

Our class is normalized and the children are on task and really working hard! Our class is very diverse in cultures, everyone brings something very special and unique in their own personalities to our class.  I really enjoy working with each and everyone, I'm very lucky to have such an amazing class!

Babana Bread....Yummy!!!

The children and I had so much fun the other day making banana bread. It was a good practical life lesson for them. We learned that everything takes time and there are several steps in the process. First we study the recipe, gather the ingredients and last we measured them. We learned about different tools and cooking utensils too. The children measured all the ingredients and everyone participated mixing them and following the recipe. We poured our batter into the baking pans and took them to the cafeteria oven. We baked them and counted the time 40 min exactly, then we pick them up, let them cool for a little while and then we enjoyed them. I was surprised, it was actually delicious!! The children and I came up to an agreement, if they do well the whole week then we get to bake something on Fridays!! Yeah, I'm exited...I love cooking and baking! Now the Kids want to do this more often and they want aprons! I don't know were can I get 22 of them! PAPA, I'm in trouble deep!

The ingredients

This is a very good recipe from a an old friend

More ingredients

Cooking utensils

Being silly!

The girls mixing

Paying attention to the recipe

Smashing the bananas

Everyone Helping!