Cinco De Mayo 2013 and review week

Happy Cinco De Mayo!!  We had our newly painted maracas from our "Xx is for Xylophone week" and were able to play them to Mariachi music.  It was a lot of fun.  I was experimenting with my camera, so excuse some of the strange photos (I had this camera for almost 8 years and I'm finally playing with it!):

We had one book for the whole week.  It's a fairly long book, so I broke it down into two days.  The book is called Magda's Tortillas or Las Tortillas de Magda, by/por Becky Chavarria-Chairez.  It's about Magda who finally gets to make tortillas with her Abuela (grandmother).  Every time Magda tried to shape the tortilla, it ends up looking like different shapes, which is extremely frustrating for her.  She was hoping that since she's watched her Abuela make tortillas so many times that she'd be able to make it perfectly the first time.  In the end we learn that everyone LOVES Magda's tortillas, because they had such fun shapes and were very different from the same old round tortillas.  Magda was called a "tortilla artist".  This is such a wonderful lesson for children that when they try something the first time, it's not going to be perfect - the way an adult does it, but that in the end it's all okay.  On Friday, we had the opportunity to take some cookie dough (called "Fun Doe") and shape it.  Well, I showed them examples of how they can make their cookie - like a teddy bear, a flower, or a dog.  Non of the children tried to do that.  It affirmed my philosophy of art that children in this age range are experimenting with the materials and learning from it.  They felt the cold squishy dough and how it squishes out and what happens if the four colors mix. Most of the children mixed all of their colors and made a roundish cookie, instead of trying to shape it into something else.  Here are some photos regarding that activity:

Here they are trying to figure out to do.

This is the cookie dough I used.  I bought it through my sons' school for a fund raiser.

This is my cookie that I made to show them what they can do with the different colors.

cookies are cooling on the pan

Mmmmmm, yummy!!

I'm going to eat you, cookie!!

Since this is a review week, we reviewed numbers and letters through games.  I bought a box of "file folder games".  They look like file folders and they simply fold out and there are game pieces.  Lakeshore is my favorite store and they must take ideas from teachers on the homemade games that they make, because when I was an elementary teacher, that's what a lot of teachers did was make homemade file folder games (probably because you couldn't buy them or they didn't want to spend their money on them).  The games help review letters and phonics.  Here are some photos of them playing (again - please excuse my experimentation with my camera and some of the darker pictures):

We also reviewed numbers and letters on the carpet through matching at my chart or a review with my cards.  During writing, we reviewed two letters and early finishers, traced a worksheet I created with the site words that the children will learn in kindergarten:

In one of my classes, I spotted a dragon fly sitting on my wall.  I quickly called my students outside to take a closer look.  Here are some photos of that great opportunity:

When it flew away, they all squealed!

Here is another outdoors photo - it was nice this week and the water table was a nice cool thing to play with:

This coming week is another review week.  We will work on two more review letters and review our numbers and letters.  I also created a worksheet with the students' names written on them for early finishers.  Our theme during our review week is "Parent Appreciation Week" where we celebrate our Moms and Dads together in a tea/coffee party.  The children's center will be to learn how to pour from a container, how to set the table, and how to take orders as a little waiter or waitress.  On Wednesday and Thursday, the parents will join us and get treated to a "Mad tea party" and presented with their Mother's and Father's Day joint gift.