Welcome Back to School 2019-2020

Hello peeps! Are you ready to go back to school? We know we are not!
Who wouldn't want the summer to last forever?!

We got together with a bunch of wonderful resource creators to bring you the best freebies to get your classroom started this fall. We thank you in advance for hopping with us!

We have been a bit slow this past year, but we are geared up to have a fantastic 2019-2020. Stay connected to get news, freebies, and lots of new resources. To get you started, you can grab our fan freebie by visiting our Facebook page, and giving us a "like"! Or if you are not feeling up to it, you can also grab it here. Yes, we are feeling that generous!

Now, this does not end here! You can get more freebies if you hop to our friends' blog and get more goodies. You will find great educators helping other educators!

Visit Mrs.Nicolau's Brinca Into Bilingual blog to keep on hopping!

Happy Valentine's Day! Grab a freebie...

How is this school year treating everyone?
Hang in there teachers! You can do it...

Are your kiddos feeling the love yet? Or the sugar... I will be praying for everyone to have a peaceful Valentine's day in the classroom. And to share the love, and thank you for all your support all these years, I have created a little valentine's for you all!

This baby can only be reached through our Facebook page!

(click the image below)

And because I know I have fellow teachers out there teaching both English and Spanish, I made sure both versions are included in this Followers Freebie!

Each set has 8 cards that include vocabulary words related to kindness, love and friendship.

If you already follow El Tesoro del saber on Facebook, just follow the A+Freebies tab to download this one. 

Happy Teaching!

La vida del Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

¡Todo un éxito con los estudiantes!

Aprendimos sobre la vida de Martin Luther King Jr. usando una gran variedad de actividades. 

Iniciamos la semana leyendo el artículo sobre el Dr.King publicado por Scholastic en su revista Let's Find Out. Los alumnos aprendieron con los videos y juegos interactivos de Scholastic, discutieron los detalles más importantes del movimiento por los derechos civiles encabezado por Martin Luther King Jr. y completaron actividades en su cuaderno interactivo. 

A través de la semana los estudiantes respodieron diversas tareas en preparación para su composición de escritura.

Usamos organizadores Thinking Maps para crear una base de escritura de manera que los estudiantes tomaran la información para construir sus oraciones.










Al final de la semana, reunimos los escritos y los decoramos para mostrar en la galería de trabajos, usamos la revista como decoración central. 

Estimation and Counting Money with Piggy Banks

We had so much fun with this simple activity!

For years I've had this little, transparent piggy bank that we've used in the classroom to count money everyday. We add pennies to count up to one dollar, symbolizing the first 100 days of school. At some point in the year we trade pennies for nickels, dimes and quarters. 

This year, we did something much different! 

Our students were struggling with estimation. They felt compelled to always count to the exact amount. In order to force them to guess, we took pictures of different amounts of coins inside the transparent piggy bank. We labeled the amounts with a number and later placed the number and its corresponding amount in a plastic baggy. 

Oh, the reactions of students were precious! 

- "But, teacher... we cannot see well"

- "I can't count these!"

- "When do we start? Where are the coins?"

- "Is this a penny... Or a dime?"

We had to discuss very seriously that estimation does not have to render the correct amount. They are so afraid of getting their answer wrong, that estimating is a shame to them!

While they worked in pairs to observe, analyze and come up with an estimation for the amount of money in their pictures, we passed out a worksheet with the instruction to fill out only the estimation part. 

Following a writing prompt, they drew what the observed and wrote a small paragraph explaining their estimation.

After they completed their work, we passed out the bags with money corresponding to their numbered piggy bank. They were able to get the coins out, manipulate them, identify their values and count to the correct amount. With that information they completed the second part of the assignment. Needless to say, there were some students changing their estimation to match the total actual value of the coins!

But for the most part, they were engaged and understood how to come up with an educated guess of their amounts. 

It was really fun to see their faces lite up with excitement, wonderment and a sparkle of wisdom!

You can make your own combinations of coins, but if you are interested in a copy of this activity you can find it here: Free Piggy Banks Estimation

Note: You will find both English and Spanish in the same file.

Happy Teaching!

Shopkins Birthday Party

Here is a personal one!
My daughter is in love with Shopkins... Like most three to thirty-year old, normal person would!
Those things are adorable!

Well, for her fourth birthday celebration we threw her a Shopkins Fun Party.

We had look everywhere for ideas and ended up with more than we could handle...
Here are a few things we did and a list of those things that we sure could have done but couldn't in the end.

Since we were on a budget, first we printed out the Shopkins Tea Party package provided for FREE at Moose Toys website. That is where we printed the Happy Birthday Bunting from. It also includes cupcake wrappers and a generic invitation. I downloaded it a long time ago, and now I cannot find it in their website. If you need the link you can find it below, just keep reading... just keep reading [Dory singing tune].

We used the poster for Bubbleisha to create our own digital invitation. We could have printed it as a postcard, but decided to just send an evite instead.

We decided to make a jumbo cupcake and dress it as Cupcake Queen, plus several mini cupcakes with just Shopkins eyes to suggest all of the other cupcake characters. It turned out quite nicely!

I do have to confess, we printed a lot of stuff for this party, but since we own a printing business, that was not an issue. Beware, if you don't like to waste a lot of color ink, this might not be helpful to you!

As treats, we found a couple of great sellers on Etsy, that carried digital files with Shopkins theme and actual products, such as Shopkins Lip Balm. We bought the pattern to print out the wrappers for Cheeky Chocolate and Poppy Corn. Oh, and of course, we purchased two sets of lip balms from Lip Balm Shop on Etsy.

The rest of the printouts we simply found a free image on the internet and blew it up to fit the candies. Make sure you find an image that has a Creative Commons License.

Because it was raining, we couldn't break our piñata, but we were saved by our vending machine!

-We will break that piñata on a sunny day for sure!-

Our vending machine was a take on the all-so-popular punch box found on pinterest. We simply painted and decorated it as a Shopkins Vending Machine. Because we had planned on making this a prize delivery for those that won at the board games, we were ready to use it in substitution of the piñata!

 We had a blast! Adults and children alike...

Everyone played the games and when someone won, they had a chance to punch a hole on the box (break through the tissue paper), and get a prize. The prizes included small Shopkins related items, such as pencil toppers and card games, plus some sports balls (stress squeeze balls) and other toys preferred by boys - hid mostly in the blue spots -.

These are the games we played...

Also, we dressed mini soda cans with the image of Soda Pop. Our piñata was indeed a Soda Pop, custom made by a great local piñata place. A&E Party Solutions.

The food as a Make Your Own Taco Terrie taco bar... with crispy shells and soft warmed maiz tortillas. For drinks we had bottles of sodas served in red Solo cups with straws and umbrellas. You could make a punch, but we wanted it to be very simple. The looks of the Little Sipper were enough!

Ok, now... to what we did not do!

Here is a list of all the things we thought of, but ended up not having time to complete, or it was out of our budget. 

• Make mini burgers or sliders and mini hotdogs as Cheesy B and Frank Furter
• Place Shopkins eyes on oranges, pears, peaches, etc... 
• Dress sticks of string cheese as Miss Swiss
• Make hot air ballons with the left over baskets of shopkins, filled with candy
• Make Lippy Lips treat containers with Pringles cylinders
• Jell-o shots dressed as Little Sipper
• Slices of watermelon next to an image of Melonie Pips, same goes for all large fruits
• Mini bags of cotton candy dressed as Candi Cotton - you could buy in a large bag and wrap around little lollipop sticks, then bag it as a pop
• Cake Pops dressed as Lolli Poppins

The sky is the limit!!

Now, to be fair, most of my students love Shopkins... I don't see why not use some and all of these in my classroom next time I promise them a party for behavior.

Post your pictures below... I want to see what you come up with at your own Shopkins Party.

Please, please, please... leave a comment that you are using the download and if you can come back and post your pictures in the comment section after you hold your own Shopkins Party!!

Here is the link - Shopkins Party Download

Rainbow Fish Craftivities

Phew! The year is over and we are still working! Summer School with the little kiddies has proved to be quite challenging, but rewarding. 

Tired and all we are helping those little ones make the transition to full day school next September. 

This week we are working on an Ocean unit that includes the reading of several bilingual books, all of which lend themselves to great cross-curricular activities. 

My favorite among all is a rainbow fish made with plates and bleeding art tissue paper! 

Finge

Izquierda o derecha?

Gracias a la vieja costumbre de enseñar a los niños de habla inglesa a reconocer la izquierda y la derecha usando las manos, me encontré con esta manera de darle un nuevo, y mejor uno a la misma técnica en español. 

En inglés, la clave es hacer una L con los dedos de ambas manos, la mano que muestre la L correctamente es la izquierda, por "Left". Por consiguiente, la mano que no muestra la L correctamente, se "descalifica" como izquierda y es la derecha. 

Este método se usa para enseñar las direcciones, e implica que el niño conozca las letras.

En el caso del español, me ha servido de manera inversa. Los peques que ya conocen cuál es su mano izquierda, o derecha, pero aun no han logrado dominar el reconocimiento de las letras, especialmente quienes por desarrollo o dislexia, confunden la "b" y la "d", se han beneficiado con el uso de esta técnica. Y cuándo digo "inversa", lo digo en más de una condición. Primeramente, la mano que corresponde a la letra correcta es la derecha, por su correspondiente sonido inicial "d". Además, los alumnos requieren saber cuál es su derecha e izquierda, previo a la actividad. Y finalmente, las letras hechas con las manos son minúsculas, cuando la actividad en inglés las requiere mayúsculas.

Para enfatizar el reconocimiento de ambas letras, cuando el alumno está activamente mostrando las letras en sus manos, el educador puede trazar la letra que se está buscando o estudiando, en la espalda del menor. Simplemente, se dice el nombre o sonido de la letra al mismo tiempo que se escribe en la espalda con el dedo o el borrador de un lápiz. La espalda se convierte en el lienzo y el cerebro transfiere la información como si fuera en el papel.

Cabe recordar que no se busca hacer la letra inicial de las palabras, "I" o "D", por izquierda y derecha, sino que se busca identificar cuál de las dos letras representadas es la "d", y cuál no lo es, y por consiguiente es la "b".

¡Espero que esto les sirva de ayuda con sus nenes de intervención!