It’s a bright and sunny day, though still quite chilly—about 38 degrees.

Starting off my almost full day with Ana was five-years A. Not a whole lot could be done today because they were SO talkative; Ana and I had to stop quite a bit and wait for quiet! We reviewed the carnaval vocab and played a couple rounds of memory game with the flashcards and that was basically it. And I don’t know why, but lately both five-year-old classes have been making fun of my pronunciation of their names; well, not making fun of me per sé, but certainly correcting me after I say it “wrong”. Hey, I do the best I can…of course my accent’s not the same. It’s kind of ironic because NO ONE pronounces my name correctly And I know it shouldn’t bother me, but every time I hear “Corni” it bugs me just the slightest bit, so I guess I know how they feel!

Four-years B was much more tranquil. I reread them the story of Ellie and her multicolored (clown) trousers. We followed that up with a worksheet in which they had to color three pairs of trousers pink and then put stickers of pink trousers in their proper places.

I read 2A the story of Lee and his mom, the vet, who go to the zoo. For some reason, I always mix up those classes and think we’ve done something in one class and it’s actually the other. I don’t have that problem with the other classes, just those ones…don’t know why. After that we played silent BINGO with animal vocab. Ana put the flashcard words on the board and they had to choose six of them. Then instead of calling out the words she stuck the corresponding pictures on the board too.

Not having that much time in four-years A, we played the memory game with carnaval vocab. It was kinda funny because I called on this one girl, Sandra, and she was like “I don’t want a turn!” and sort of frowned. Ana said “If you don’t take a turn, you won’t get a sticker” (she always ends classes by giving out either stickers or stamps) but Sandra didn’t seem to care. Oh and one little boy fell asleep too! For almost the entire class he slept leaning against the wall. Ana just let him sleep…he must have been a tired little guy!

6B had an exam last hour, so there was nothing for me to do.

So I tried the vanilla soy last night and it wasn’t bad! It was very sweet and few more calories than I’m used to for milk, but I’d buy it again! I still have my regular milk in the morning and I think I’m going to treat it as a desserty thing after dinner.

Xoxo,

Court

Well, we had a break for a couple of days, but it’s back to freezing again! It’s clear and 39, but the air is just so cold...and when the wind blows it’s just terrible! :I

First hour after much review with 1A, they did a worksheet in which they were given pictures of animals and food and they had to unite them, who ate what. They then had to trace the food words (grass, meat, fish, etc) and say whether each animal was viviparous or oviparous.

With 3A and B second and last hours we reviewed the alphabet and spelling names/objects. Noelia and I then put some school vocab flashcards on the board and we did a little practice with the prepositions on, in, under and behind. For example, we would call up a student and say “take the computer (flashcard) and put it under your chair.

Before “breakfast” in five-years B we played a memory game with carnaval vocab and that was followed by coloring a bed and a then drawing their favorite costume on the bed—which I thought was a bit of a strange idea, but whatever.

In 4B I introduced the new “typical day” vocab and afterwards they had to write it in their notebooks and translate it. And they must have had some activities from the last unit because they corrected a workbook page.

I went to Mercadona for a few things after school and decided to try some soy milk; well technically it’s vanilla, but still. I hear a lot of people talk about it on MFP and how much they like it, so I thought I’d give it a try. We’ll see…and if it’s horrible, that’s ok because it only cost 85 cents!

Xoxo,

Court

It is currently cloudy and 43 degrees. It’s been a poopy day; raining on and off. It was kinda spitting on my way home and unless my eyes were playing tricks on me I saw a few white flecks in the air!

We talked about Groundhog Day in the fifth levels today. I found one PowerPoint that explained the general idea of the day and then another that talked about ancient legends and superstitions. I also read a poem to them and then we took a look at two videos about Punxsutawney Phil and his predictions for 2011 and 2012.

I was a little bit late to Marina’s second hour because I was trying to download the YouTube videos first hour and the internet signal is horrible from that room! So I got there and she had already started them on their workbook page. I told her why I was late and she said I could continue looking if I wanted to. For some reason, though, I couldn’t download anything from her computer, so I moved on to Valentine activities.

So I asked Analen third hour if she was able to download videos and thankfully she was and had Real Player installed (because I didn’t know how to do it otherwise). The signal in her class is excellent—and most places it’s not—so I got another video downloaded during her class whilst the kids did some workbook activities.

I need to look for more Valentine’s day activities and be as prepared as possible, even though next Tuesday at the start of first hour Rocío’s gonna be like “Oh, how bout we find something like…”. Good thing she doesn’t get mad at me if I don’t have something she wants…she’s always like “Don’t worry, because we have to…”. And it prolly helps a bit too that she likes to yell at the kids and that usually wastes some time!

Xoxo,

Court

Today it’s SO much warmer than it has been lately! It’s 48, sunny and the wind isn’t too horrible! I hope the cold stays away…I think I missed my car more this weekend than any other time in the past two years—and that includes shopping!

I had an easy day! We skipped the London video with the sixth levels and started talking about Nebraska right away. We watched this video I’d found about Lincoln, made by the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce to promote the city. I really miss Lincoln after watching the video…can’t wait until June! I stopped the video in various places and we talked about outdoor vs. indoor malls (Gateway vs. SouthPointe), Haymarket Park, Memorial Stadium and American houses in general. We ended with a short video about the Huskers!

I introduced some new vocab to 4A; this unit is about a typical day (get up, eat breakfast, go to school, have lunch…). Analen said it as a cool unit, though she may have said that just because (now that I think about it, what’s she gonna say “This unit sucks!”? Yeah, prolly not…

With the three-year-olds we “played a game” to reinforce the colors red and yellow. Ana had bought plastic plates and they had to make a sequence of red, yellow, red, yellow and so on. We called up students and they made a line out of plates; if they weren’t called on they were upset! Oh and this one kid pooed his pants and apparently kept trying to touch it or something (this was last hour so I guess it didn’t make sense for his parents to come) so Ana had to be like “We don’t touch caca!” a million times! And every time she said this he would shout “¡¡¡CACA!!!” That, right there, is another reason why I would never teach preschool/young kids…EWWWW!!!!!!!

Xoxo,

Court

Well, according to my weather thing it’s 37 and currently snowing. FAIL! It is cloudy and cold (and most likely 37) but it is NOT snowing! Maybe it feels left out from all the snow Nebraska got yesterday???

This has been a super cold weekend though; it’s been in the 30s the past few days, perhaps the coldest it’s been since coming (including last year!) Combine that with a fierce wind and walking everywhere is miserable! :I

I went to Eloy’s movie club on Friday night (even though I really didn’t want to go out!) and we watched Freedom Writers. I had never seen it before and I thought it was pretty good. A couple of months ago, before the movies began, he asked me if I’d be interested (or rather willing) to go have a drink after the movies and continue English conversation. Even though I really didn’t want to, I felt bad about saying no, I agreed. Thankfully though no one really sticks around after it ends so I’ve been able to dodge the bullet thus far!

I went to mass last night and arrived a good ten minutes early because I really didn’t want a repeat from last week and have to have to sit in the front. No problems this week; I sat about halfway up.

I downloaded a few movies yesterday and watched Harry Potter 7 Part 1 last night and I think I’m going to watch Part 2 after a bit. I also downloaded Little Women, which is kind of old and random but I’ve never seen it and thought about it, so I figured I’d watch that too…sometime, not necessarily today.

Who’s going to win the Super Bowl??? Not that I follow Pro football (heck, I barely follow college), but it seems like the Patriots have done really well the last few years. OR I could just be making that up, I don’t really know…

Xoxo,

Court  

First, Happy Groundhog Day! Second, holy buckets, it’s FREEZING! It’s been mostly sunny the entire day, but the wind is bone-chilling COLD. My weather thing says it’s 37, but it’s gotta be colder than that with the wind chill!

First hour with five-years A I reread them the story of Poppy, Max, Ellie and carnaval. We then played the memory game with carnaval vocab that we played with B yesterday.

With four-years A and B I read them a new story about Ellie and her trousers. All of her clothes were white, which she didn’t like, so Max magicked up some colorful clothes, like a yellow shirt, orange shoes and multicolored clown-looking pants! After that we played around with a poster of a boy and a girl with which we could change out the articles of clothing.

2A started a new unit about animals—snake, crocodile, elephant, bird, tiger, lion and others. I read and repeated the vocab with the class and the stuck the flashcards on the board. I then called up students to turn over the flashcards and then had other students come and guess what was where. I made this one kid cry because he didn’t know where the card I’d asked about was; I felt bad! :(

In 6B we watched this short animated wordless video as part of Peace Day. This guy goes outside and the whole world is yelling at him, so he hugs them until they aren’t mad anymore and hug him back. We didn’t have too much time after that, but we started watching this video about London and all its attractions and famous places.

Class this afternoon and then it’s the weekend!!! Oh and did the groundhog see his shadow? I don’t know; though it’s still pretty early in the morning in the US so maybe he hasn’t awoken yet. It’s prolly gonna be six more weeks of winter—it usually is…BOO!

Xoxo,

Court

It’s sunny and 55 this afternoon; the wind isn’t too bad either!

Starting off this morning, in 1A we reviewed for a little over half the class: numbers 1-30, parts of the body, foods and occupations. With the last maybe like 20 minutes we did a worksheet about viviparous and oviparous animals (big terms for six-year-olds, I think!). There was a simple explanation in the book and then they had to put stickers of animals in each category. I think Marina was a little unsure about the pronunciation, because all the sentences with viviparous/oviparous in it she asked me to read.

Second and last hours with 3A and B we went to the video room to talk about Peace Day. I wasn’t expecting to with that class. When I got to the classroom Noelia asked me to go down and get everything set up and they would be down after a bit (which was like 15 minutes with A and half an hour with B!). So we really didn’t have that much time…we listened to MLK’s speech and then to the song I found for Rocío’s classes (because I hadn’t found anything specifically for Peace Day).

Five-years B was really loud and kind of annoying today. We didn’t have a whole lot of time, so we played a memory game with the vocab flashcards of carnival. Afterwards they quickly drew a picture of their favorite costume.

Right away when I got to 4B, Analen asked me to explain the worksheet I explained to A on Monday. That was the extent of my participation that hour. I sat there the rest of the hour and with like 15 minutes left in class I started to halfheartedly look for Valentine’s activities. I really didn’t find anything though, as I didn’t put a lot of effort into it.

I don’t have class this afternoon, so I’m seriously considering a nap…I don’t know why I’m so tired today!

Xoxo,

Court