Christmas Time!

Christmas is approaching and the students of CEIP San Miguel has been doing many lovely activities to get into the holiday spirit. Many of the classes have made some type of craft about Christmas, such as ornaments, Christmas trees, snowmen, Santa Claus, or Christmas cards.

Some of the students created a beautiful Christmas landscape with clouds, lollipops, and stars in the background and their own homemade figures showing in the front. 

The students in one class even made me a very cute flipbook in which they each created a page about Christmas. It was very sweet! : 

Here you can see some of the Christmas cards that the students created and wrote their own message inside: 

A Chrismas Poem by Jo Geis: "Christmas Long Ago"

Frosty days and ice-still nights,
Fir trees trimmed with tiny lights,
Sound of sleigh bells in the snow,
That was Christmas long ago.
Tykes on sleds and shouts of glee,
Icy-window filigree,
Sugarplums and candle glow,
Part of Christmas long ago.
Footsteps stealthy on the stair,
Sweet-voiced carols in the air,
Stocking hanging in a row,
Tell of Christmas long ago.
Starry nights so still and blue,
Good friends calling out to you,
Life, so fact, will always slow…
For dreams of Christmas long ago.

Me on a Map! 5th grade

The students of 5th grade B social science class did a very interesting project when learning about maps! They created a lovely flipbook about where they live on the Earth.

Each category gets more and more specific. The most general category is called 'My Planet' and the most specific is 'My Street'. The order of the categories is 'My Planet', 'My Continent', 'My Country', 'My Community', 'My Town', and 'My Street'.

The students then researched information about each category and wrote facts underneath the flaps so that when you unfold each category, you are presented with five fascinating facts about each place. For example, under 'My Planet', some students wrote 'The Earth is the third planet from the sun'. About Europe ('My Continent'), they wrote 'Europe is the second smallest continent in the world'. Many students were surprised to hear that it is so small, but there are many enormous continents in the world. For 'My Country' (Spain), some wrote facts about the location ('Spain is located on the Iberian Peninsula') or about things that Spain produces, 'Spain produces the most olive oil in the world'. Under 'My Community' (Andalusia), some wrote about the colors of the flag, flamenco, or Holy Week (Semana Santa). For 'My Town' (Armilla), they wrote about the population, the schools, and Nevada Shopping. The facts about the streets varied from each student but they wrote about shops or bakeries that were located nearby.

After researching, editing, and creating their flipbooks, the students presented the project to the class. It was a very lovely project that allowed the students to learn about where they come from and also realize how big our planet really is.

Here you can see examples of some of the students' projects 'Me on a Map'!:

Thanksgiving! 5th grade

Some people know about the very important holiday in the USA called Thanksgiving. Last week, the children of CEIP San Miguel got to learn all about it. Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated in America on the fourth Thursday of November. Historically, it celebrates the great meal that the pilgrims had together with the Native Americans when they sailed to America. Now, the holiday focuses more on family getting together and feeling thankful, or grateful, for all the good things we have in our lives. Some examples of things we are thankful for that we talked about were family, school, friends, food, health, and pets. In Lucia's 5th grade class, we did a very nice project in which each student wrote one thing they feel thankful for on a turkey feather (turkeys are important to Thanksgiving because they provided us with food). At the end, they each stuck their feather on a big turkey! This was a great project for them because they got to understand a bit more about the culture of an American holiday and reflected about the things in their lives that really matter.

Here you can see the end result (the big turkey) and some of the students creating their feathers: 

5 Senses Project in 4th Grade

Lucia's 4th grade science class worked on a wonderful project about the five senses. They used their knowledge about the five senses (sight, taste, smell, touch, and hearing) to create a project incorporating examples for each of the senses. For sight, some of the students drew shapes, colors, sizes, and distances. In smells, they included bad and smells. One student even used a real garlic clove. For bad smells, they included garlic and rubbish. Under good smells, they used tea bags and flowers. For taste, they included all different kinds of tastes, such as sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. They used examples for touch such as rough or soft objects. The children had a lot of fun coming up with samples and creating this lovely project. Here you can see a few of their projects: