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:

The Five Senses in 1st Grade

The children in Marta´s first grade science class started learning about the five senses in English. The five senses are sight (eyes), hearing (ears), smell (nose), taste (tongue/mouth), and touch (hands/skin). We played a very interesting activity in which each of the students were given a card with an object, like an apple, a pair of headphones, or the moon, and they matched the object on the board next to the sense.

They really enjoyed playing this activity and were very excited to go up to the board and stick their card in the correct place. Some of the matches for sight were the moon, a colorful parrot, and the sun. For hearing, they matched headphones, a crying baby, and a barking dog. For smell, they placed perfume, a stinky sock, and a bouquet of flowers. Under taste, they matched all kinds of foods (apple, pancakes, pizza), making everyone very hungry. Next to touch, they matched a fluffy kitten, a pillow, and a woolly sheep.

Here you can see one of the students matching ´the sun´ with the sense ´sight´:

Next, they completed an individual activity that was very similar. For this activity, they had to color the objects and then match them to the senses. The objects were ice cream, music, a book, a bag of trash, and a boy petting a cat. Can you guess which senses the objects belonged in? :)

The Universe Project: 5th Grade

The Universe can be a very interesting topic for the children. This is why they have made a project about it by pairs. They have researched about the Solar System, the planets, the satellites and how the planets move in the galaxy. The final task was to explain the project orally to their colleagues in English. Here it is their wonderful results and their display.
These are some resources we have used to work this unit in class:

• The Universe II
• The Universe I

Layers of the Atmosphere in 4th Grade

The fourth graders here at CEIP San Miguel have been learning about the different layers of the atmosphere. We have also learned about the layers in English, which are the Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere and Exosphere. They even know key components of each layer! For example, the ozone, which helps keep harmful UV rays from the sun away from the Earth, is located in the Stratosphere and the Exosphere (the outermost layer) has extremely thin air.
We watched a video talking about the different layers of the atmosphere and explained fun facts about each layer, and also the distance, size, and temperature.

The students drew a picture showing the Earth and all of the layers that cover it. They wrote and drew the unique parts about each layer in the picture. The Troposphere is where the weather occurs, so they drew different types of weather, like sunny, rainy, or snowy. In the Stratosphere, they drew the ozone, in the Mesosphere, they wrote ´very cold´,and in the Thermosphere they wrote ´very hot´. The students really seemed to enjoy this activity and it also helped them visualize the different layers of the atmosphere and to understand the unique parts of each layer.

Here you can see some examples of the Layers of the Atmosphere that the students drew:

And here is a photo of them working on the project:

Megan's Second Year as an English Language Assistant

This will be my second year as an English language and culture assistant at CEIP San Miguel. I am very glad to be back and I'm excited to learn and gain even more experience working with the wonderful students and teachers at this school! For my first day back, I created a presentation about what I did during my summer. After I presented the PowerPoint to the children, I asked them about how their summers were and what they did. They created their own mini posters with a drawing and a sentence about one thing they did over the summer. The students wrote about going to the beach, going to the mountains, going to the swimming pool, and visiting family and friends.

Here is the presentation "My Summer":

Look at the posters that the children in 3rd grade made about their summers:

A Flipbook to explain: Food Chain or Food Web?

Children of 5th grade have been working about the differences about the Food Web  and the Food Chain. The final product of the unit has been to produce a flipbook with some examples about this topic.

They have done a great work!

Do you want to learn more?

These are the links with the material we are using at school:

• Ecosystems I
• Ecosystems II

Springtime!

Springtime is always such a lovely time of year. The sun starts to come out, flowers bloom, birds chirp. Spring is a time to appreciate all the beautiful things in nature and celebrate with those around us. Every culture has their own unique celebrations in the spring. Most of Spain celebrate Holy Week (Semana Santa), people in England or the USA celebrate Easter, in India they celebrate “Holi”, a holiday in which they come together and throw colors at each other to celebrate the many different hues that come out in spring. In Mexico, they have a parade and all wear white to celebrate the Spring equinox, or the first day of spring.

Being from the USA, I can explain Easter from personal experience. Easter involves many fun activities and lots of chocolate eating! On Easter Sunday, families get together to have a huge brunch (breakfast+lunch), they color eggs, have an Easter egg hunt, and finally, eat all the candy from the eggs! To color the eggs, we first hard boil them, then we use dyes to dip the eggs into and crayons to make interesting shapes on the eggs. In an Easter egg hunt, the Easter bunny hides the eggs in various places of the garden and all the children have to find the eggs. In my home state (Washington) we also have a festival to show off all the colorful flowers that bloom in springtime!

Here you can see a video of the tulip festival in Washington: 

             

So, it seems every culture celebrates spring a little differently, but I think we can all agree that spring is a time to appreciate all that nature has to offer, and spend quality time with our family. How do you celebrate spring? :)

Jeopardy! (6th Grade)

A fun way for the students to learn or study for an exam is a game called Jeopardy! It is based on a television game show from the USA that has different categories and also different levels of money (or points). As the money increases, so does the difficulty of the question! We separate the students into groups and they must work as a team to try to earn the most points by answering the questions correctly, pronunciation included ;) The students love playing it and it is a great way for them to prepare for an exam in a fun environment! Here you can see the students from 6th grade playing Jeopardy based on the topic of Economy in Europe and Spain:

Animals and Ecosystems (2nd Grade)

In the second grade, we have been working on learning about ecosystems and about all the different animals and plants in ecosystems. In My Pond Community, we made a pond ecosystem with water, plants, the sun, birds, fish, frogs, and turtles. We are learning about the many parts that make up an ecysystem and why each part is important. And here you can see the different types of ecosystems we have learned about.

Here you can download the ecosystem template, just print it for your class.
Pond Ecosystem Cut & Paste template
Cycle of the frog template

Here you can see the life cycle of the frog: 

The life cycle of a frog starts with an egg, then a tadpole, a tadpole with legs, a tadpole with arms and legs, a froglet, and finally, an adult frog. 

The earth has many different ecosystems and we have learned about a few key ones: forest, desert, ocean, and polar. The children learned about the different plants and animals that belong in each ecosystem. For example, in a forest, you will find pine trees, deer, and owls, while in a desert, you will find sand, cactuses, snakes, and camels. 

Parts of the Cell (6th Grade Project)

Here you are the great projects made by students from 6th B. 

CONGRATS YOU ALL!