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The Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico and some other areas of Central and South America on November 1st and 2nd. It is a time to celebrate our ancestors. Families visit cemeteries and spend the whole evening there eating, dancing, and telling stories about their loved ones by candlelight. They believe that the spirits of their ancestors can be with them on those days. But if we don't remember our loved ones, they cannot return. So we must share our memories of them and think of them often. This holiday may remind us of Halloween because skulls and skeletons are a common theme, but the Day of the Dead is actually a happy celebration; it is not sad or scary. Día de los Muertos skeletons are bright, colorful, dressed up, and happy. If you have seen the movie Coco, it is a very good representation of the Day of the Dead. If you haven't seen it, it's on Netflix! Below are some activities that students did/are doing to celebrate Día de los Muertos in class. Also, thanks to Noah for the Day of the Dead sign! Check out our lovely display case above with the fourth grade "Todo Acerca de Mi" (All About Me) pennants and the kindergarten self portraits with "Me llamo..." (My name is ...) on them. Students did a fantastic job! Fourth graders have begun to read their very first novel in Spanish. It is called El Capibara con Botas and it is about a Capibara named Carlos who lives in Ecuador and can't swim because he doesn't have the webbed feet that a normal capybara would have. I attached a picture of the first chapter below. Try asking your child what a capybara is and what the story is about! You can also check out this video about capybaras in case you are wondering what these strange animals are all about! Kindergarten students have already started learning so much! They know how to say (and sing) about their name (me llamo = my name is), their friends (amigos), and hi and bye (hola and adios!). They also know that Yo puedo means I can. Last week, we drew self portraits and wrote our names on the bottom. We talked about how Frida Kahlo was an artist in Mexico who drew self portraits. Some students recognized her name and character from the movie Coco.
First graders are working on learning new feelings including happy, sad, hungry, thirsty, angry, sleepy, sick, and bored. Ask your child ¿Cómo estás? and see what they say! Second graders have been working on calendar words - days of the week, months, seasons, and numbers. We are learning to count into the 60s this year. See how high your child can count now! Third grade has started one of my favorite units... animals! They are learning about different animals and their habitats. Fourth grade is soon starting to read an actual book called El Capibara con Botas. Ask your child what they know about the strange animal named the Cabybara! Welcome back to another school year and another year of Spanish! I am once again teaching all classes from grades K-4 at Hope Valley and grades K-2 and Mrs. Ornburn's fourth grade at Ashaway, as well as Mrs. Webster's second grade at Richmond. Feel free to check out the Spanish website for videos, games, and websites that you can use to practice at home. You can also check back for more blog posts throughout the year. I will be posting pictures, videos, and topics that we are discussing in class. I hope to add a new blog post at least once a month.
Have a good school year and feel free to email me at [email protected] if you ever have any questions! -Sra. Carpenter Below are some photos of some of the things that we have been working on for the last month or so of school. My first graders at Hope Valley wrote their own Zonas de Regulación - Zones of Regulation - in Spanish. The zones are a way for students to express and understand how they are feeling.
Around the time of Cinco de Mayo, some of my classes made papel picado, which is a typical decoration in Mexico for holidays. Other classes made mini piñata decorations. First graders learned the popular hispanic nursery rhyme Un Elefante and we acted out the elephants balancing on the spider web as we sang it. Second graders at Ashaway made "Me gusta el verano" self portraits. It says things that they like to do in summer on it. Last Thursday was the Rhode Island Foreign Language Association spring dinner where Hope Valley's Skye Wilding was recognized for winning the elementary poster contest. Congratulations again Skye! ¡Enhorabuena!
Third and Fourth grade recently created posters during art and Spanish for a contest with the theme Languages are the Key to Global Understanding. This was a statewide contest for all elementary students that are taking a foreign language. For the second year, a student at Hope Valley has won! Congratulations to Skye Wilding in Mrs. St. Clair's 4th grade class! She is invited to attend a dinner where she will receive a certificate and a cash prize of $50! Below is her winning poster. Grade 2 has been learning about clothing in class. We created outfits for each season and cut and pasted them on a worksheet below. In grade 2 at Ashaway, we have been practicing our handwriting and poetry. In the example below, the poem is about a person seeing a purple cow and realizing that it is only a dream. The illustration does a great job of depicting the theme of the poem. Grade 1 has been working on family vocabulary and are currently presenting pictures that they drew of their family to the class. They are describing their family members in Spanish! Kindergarten is working on saying classroom objects in Spanish. We can say pencil, eraser, crayons, scissors, paper, book, glue stick, and backpack. We are starting to create our very own book about the items in the backpack! Students will be able to read their book aloud. Grades 3 and 4 are finishing up their unit on animals. We have been doing a lot of storytelling through a method of language learning called TPRS - teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling (that's a mouthful!). Students have enjoyed listening to the story and learning vocabulary and grammatical structures in the process. I hope everyone has a wonderful vacation! Second graders have begun to learn how to tell time in Spanish. We have learned time on the hour and half hour. To go with our time unit, we also learned about the painting The Persistence of Memory, by Spanish artist Salvador Dalí. In the painting, there are melting clocks that represent the fact that time moves in a different way when we dream or when we recall memories. There is also a bland figure in the middle of the painting that is thought to be a dream-like figure. In art class, students made their own melting clocks and we put that together with our Spanish knowledge to make a video about telling time. Check out the videos below for each second grade class that I teach at all schools.
This week some classes will be doing Spanish Valentine's Day station rotations. In Spanish, Valentine's Day is translated as El Día de San Valentín, but is typically called El Día del Amor y la Amistad, meaning The Day of Love and Friendship. Check our Mrs. Pierce's 2nd grade class in each of the three stations - coloring the hearts, color memory, and sorting the conversation cards. It has been a crazy few weeks since vacation! Grade 3 students at Hope Valley made paper shoes on January 2nd to leave out for the 3 Wise Men. Thankfully, we made them in class on Tuesday and put them out on the window sill, because we didn't have school on Thursday or Friday and Three Kings Day was on Saturday, January 6th. I was VERY nervous that the Three Wise Men wouldn't come because of the snow storm and because I meant to leave them a letter with the shoes on Friday but wasn't able to with the snow day. I was very pleased to arrive at school on Tuesday to find that the Three Wise Men did stop by and left little goodies for the kids! They left stickers, bracelets, and GI Joe figures.
In Spain and many countries around the world, the Christmas season isn't really over until January 6th, when the Three Wise Men/Three Kings (in Spanish, Los Reyes Magos), leave treats in children's shoes that are left by the door. We are extremely lucky that the Three Kings took time out of their busy gift-giving schedule to visit us in Hope Valley. Check out the pictures below from the shoes in Mr. Fanning's and Mrs. Zonfrilli's rooms. |
La Autora¡Hola! My name is Dori Carpenter. I teach K-4 Spanish at Hope Valley and Ashaway Elementary Schools in the Chariho Regional School District. I began teaching high school Spanish in 2010 and have been teaching at the elementary level in Chariho since 2014. I studied Spanish and Secondary Education at Providence College and The University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain. Archives
November 2017
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