Guatemalan Worry Dolls

This week with my crafts club we made Guatemalan Worry Dolls. Worry dolls are given to children to help them deal with difficult times. They are stored in a special box or bag until nighttime. Then, just before going to sleep, children take out the worry dolls and tell one worry to each dolls. The dolls then spend the night under the children's pillows until going back in the box the next morning. Worry dolls are a lot like dream catchers. You can certainly buy them or you can make them yourself using pipe cleaners and yarn!

How to make your own worry dolls:

Materials: 2 or 3 wire twist-ties (or pipe-cleaners), 4 inches long; colored yarn or string; scraps of colored paper; scissors; glue; makers

 Step 1) For a bigger doll, use 3 pieces of pipe-cleaner. Twist two together, about an inch from the top. Keep the short ends together (for the head later) but separate the long ends (for the legs). 

Step 2) Wrap the third piece around the body for the arms. Make sure they are even lengths. Bend the hands and feet.

*NOTE* For a smaller doll, use only 2 pieces. Fold one in half and separate the ends. Wrap the second piece around the body to make the arms.

 Step 3) Knot a piece of yarn to the pipe-cleaners where they cross. With the loose end of the yarn, wrap it around the body and down one leg. Then wind the yarn back up the same leg. Do the other leg the same way. Then, wrap the arms in the same fashion. To finish, crisscross the yarn over the shoulders and under the armpits (my students couldn't stop laughing any time I said armpits... not sure why it's so funny but they were fun to watch). Cut the yarn and glue the end to the doll's back.

Step 4) Cut a colored paper rectangle larger than the head. Fold it in half to make a square and round out the edges with scissors. Glue the paper around the doll's head and draw a face. You can add hair if you want as well. This is a picture of dolls that my students made. Aren't they great?

Want to do more? During this activity we also practiced saying colors and body parts. You could also practice adjectives by having children present their dolls to the class as they describe their dolls. You could take this activity to the next level by have the children make the dolls interact with each other and have short conversations. Students could perform their "puppet show" in front of the class or other groups of friends.

I have a challenge for you...

Donors Choose is a great organization that allows you to connect to classrooms in need by donating money through their online charity. Teachers post requests for money to buy school supplies or to start enrichment programs, or even go on study abroad trips with their students. Gracious people donate their money and the students benefit enormously! I haven't posted any requests but some of my friends at charter schools have and it has really helped them to be able to provide a quality education for their students. I have donated before, and this is how.

I was on a search for technology useful to the classroom when I came across education.skype.com (see this previous blog post for more information). The really neat thing was that after I signed up, skype gave me a $25 credit to use on donors choose! How awesome is that? So I searched through all the different projects and chose to sponsor a study-abroad trip for a group of students to go to Costa Rica. I'd rather go on the trip than just donate (who wouldn't) but I'm so happy I'm able to help them enrich their Spanish experience. There are so many different types of projects from which to choose. It was a very difficult, yet fun, decision. And good news! The project just became fully funded as of 5 hours ago! Yay!

Here's my challenge to anyone who reads this blog. I challenge you to make a positive difference in someone's education.There are three different ways to accomplish this challenge. Option 1) If you have a skype account, sign up for education.skype.com. You don't have to plan on using it; you don't even have to be a teacher. Just sign up so that you can get the credit and then DONATE to Donors choose! Option 2) If you don't have a skype account, sign up for that first, then continue for directions under option 1. Option 3) Donate your own money! All the projects on this website are for a really great cause and all of these kids deserve our support. So now the question isn't whether or not you'll accept my challenge... the question is, to which project will you donate?

We made it to the next step!

I have had two curriculum meetings in the past two weeks with the foreign language team in my school district. We met last week just as a team of 4 to continue creating can-do statements and thematic webs for  each of 6 units in every grade. We've been stuck on this step for awhile - since the fall - and it's been a little frustrating. We come up with something we think is awesome and then we look at it the next meeting and hate it. So we change it. And then change it again. We spent a lot of time of elementary units, which made me feel a little bad for the middle school teachers. You can't know what to teach in middle school though if you don't know what you're teaching in elementary school so it was necessary to start from the youngest grade and work our way up. However last week, we finally got to middle school! And I must say, the middle school units look pretty awesome. There's one on communication, both face-to-face and with technology (ie learning how to text in Spanish :) ), and there's another one of love and relationships, and another one on how to communicate with medical professionals.... just to name a few. They all sound like so much fun to teach and will actually be useful to students if (hopefully when) they ever go abroad.

Yesterday was our second meeting and we finally finished all (well, most of) the overview of the units! We also had the smiling approval of our wonderful curriculum consultant, Helena Curtain. We finally made it to the next step in the curriculum process. At the end of yesterday, we wrote essential questions (EQ) for almost every grade; we just have grades 3-5 left. Our next meeting isn't until late May but at that meeting, we'll finish the EQs and then get a refresher course on how to write a UPI (unit plan inventory). After that, we need to go through the current Spanish 1 and 2 curriculum and make sure we hit all the grammar points in the new curriculum. Then, we can start writing assessments, creating lessons, and gathering materials! There's definitely still a lot to do, but we can see a light at the end of the tunnel now. It's been a long, slow process but is totally worth it. Even the small changes we are currently making in our classrooms are showing such a difference in how our students can communicate orally. They have so much more confidence now than at the beginning of the year and it makes me so proud to me my students succeeding in the ways that they are.

Weaving with straws

When I went to Peru a few years ago, I went as part of a volunteer group to promote awareness about the weaving culture. My volunteer group consisted of 15 undergraduate students and 1 professor. While we all spoke Spanish in the group, only our professor had any previous knowledge about weaving. We worked with the Cusco Center of Textiles and met a lot of incredible people. I had such an amazing time learning how to weave and communicating and connecting with my weaving mentor. We learned all about the weaving process; from shearing the animals to washing the wool (this process sent me to the emergency eye doctor after some detergent scratched my cornea - I had to wear an eye patch for 3 days!). We also learned how to dye the wool using natural products like leaves, berries, and sticks. Finally, we learned how to spin the wool to make it nice and fine for weaving. Then came actually learning how to weave, which was very difficult, but a lot of fun. In the end, my peers and I made bracelets, belts, hats, and purses. We felt very accomplished. I can't imagine that being my lifestyle though and spending every day of my life weaving to survive. The weavers were very proud of their work and you could see it in their lit-up eyes as they spoke about it. My peers and I were very impressed with their creations of ponchos, blankets, place mats, and table-runners, just to name a few.

I've been trying to figure out a way to share this experience with my classes. There wasn't room in the curriculum this year to add in a full unit and I wasn't sure what I'd even do. So, instead I just shared this experience with my Spanish crafts after-school club. I showed them my weavings and balls of yarn and then we did our own weaving project that I found in a Spanish crafts book. The weaving project went... okay. I didn't test it out ahead of time (fatal mistake, I should have known better - my mom would be disappointed especially since I helped her test out so many experiments and activities ahead of time for her class) so I was trying to figure it out as we went along. That meant that I didn't have the answers for my students so they became frustrated which made me more frustrated which was just a vicious circle. After thinking about it more last night and this morning, I have come up with ways to improve this project for next time. It still needs improvement because this new process isn't perfect either. However, every day is a learning experience, right? Here's the process, with updated directions.

Materials: Yarn, ruler (or measuring tape), straws, scissors

Step 1: Cut 2 equal strings about 30 inches each. (2 for a bracelet, 4 for a belt)

Step 2: Cut 1/2 inch off the top of each straw and feed one string through each tiny piece of straw.

 Step 3: Thread both parts of the string through the long part of the straw. LOOSELY knot the ends of the string together. (You will be untying this later.)

 Step 4: Start weaving! Grab the end of the skein of yarn and tie a know around the bottom of one of the straws. Wrap the yarn around one straw, then drop it through the middle, then wrap around the other straw. Go back and forth, making sure everything stays tight together. When you fill up the straws, gently push the woven part off the bottom of the straw and continue weaving.

Step 5: When your project looks long enough, cut the yarn from the skein and carefully knot the yarn to the straw. Then, cut the little pieces of straw off the yarn. Next, slowly slide the straws out from the yarn.

 Step 6: Untie the loose knotted end of your bracelet and then tie the two ends together. Admire the beauty of the project you just created!

Online pop-up books

I was having difficulties trying to come up with a fun and different way to introduce vocabulary to my students. I've read books, although most times those don't quite align with what I want to teach. In those cases, I've created my own "books" using power point and prezi (check out this post about prezi). I've shown little video clips and made my own (using xtranormal... read this post for more information). I've shown big, printed-off clip-art pictures and matched the pictures to labels. I've used props, like classroom objects or stuffed animals, and had the kids pass the objects around the class. I've done all these ways many times before during this year and I wanted something new for my 3rd graders unit on school subjects. I wanted something different but didn't know what to do...


Luckily, the technology person at my school just showed me this awesome new website a few weeks ago. It's this awesome website called Zoo Burst that allows you to make online pop-up books! It's different, it's fun, and it's easy to make! You can sign up for a free account (which I did) which has plenty of options for characters, backgrounds, and extra props. If you pay for an account (which the technology person did) then it also comes with a voice feature. I think if I worked with students that had and brought their laptops with them to every class, paying for this service would be totally worth it. I can just imagine students creating their own children's story and recording themselves telling the story. What a great oral assessment! However, my students don't have their own laptops, so I just signed up for the free version. It's very simple to create the scenes; you can upload your own pictures or use their clipart for characters, props, and background. Each character can say whatever you want it to, and there is also a narration caption for the page itself. There is a limit of 10 pages (may be more for the paid version, I'm not sure) and I found that to be plenty. Here is my example.


You're probably wondering what my students thought. Well, they loved it! They smiled and giggled every time a new character popped up and even started reading some of the words themselves. It made for a fun and interactive lesson. We read it through once while I asked them questions in Spanish about the content of the book (Do you use a calculator in math? Do you run in music class?). The second time reading, I asked them who taught each subject and gave ridiculous examples to help them understand what I was asking. All in all, it was a very successful and engaging day.

Hot chocolate like you've never tasted

This is another recipe that I used with my after-school cooking club. Again, it was the first day so I don't have pictures but this is a delicious recipe. This hot chocolate is not like the swiss miss envelope packets at all. It is so much better than that and totally worth the effort. I got this recipe from my host family when I stayed in Peru during college.

Hot Chocolate (Peru)

Ingredients:

4 oz chocolate de taza, or semisweet chocolate, chopped

3 cups water

4 cloves

2 sticks cinnamon

1 can unsweetened evaporated milk

Sugar to taste

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

½ teaspoon nutmeg, grated

whipped cream (optional)

Oats (optional)

Preparation:

1.   Bring the water to boil with the cinnamon and cloves, for 10 minutes.

2.   Add the chopped chocolate, stirring until melted.

3.   Add evaporated milk, sugar to taste, nutmeg, and vanilla extract.

4.   Serve immediately with a dollop of whipped cream if desired, and a sprinkling of ground cinnamon or grated chocolate. You can also put oats in the hot chocolate to give it a little bit of texture. My host family from Peru taught me that :)

Colombian Coconut Cake

Here's another recipe from something I made with my Horizons class. We made this the first day so I forgot to take pictures. It was a lot of fun and very easy to make. I got this recipe from a friend whose boyfriend is Colombian.

Pastel de Macarena

Ingredients:

2 sticks butter (softened)

¾ can coconut cream

¼ cup vanilla yogurt

½ box vanilla wafers

1 cup hot chocolate

12 oz mini chocolate chips

½ bag shredded coconut

Preparation:

1.   Make hot chocolate and set aside to let cool.

2.   Beat 2 sticks of butter in a medium bowl.

3.   Add about 3/4 a can of coconut cream and 1/4 cup of yogurt. Beat this all together. Set the coconut mixture aside.

4.   Dip the vanilla wafers in the hot chocolate, then line the bottom of the pan with the soaked wafers.

5.   Spread a layer of the coconut mixture over the wafers.

6.   Cover the mixture with shredded coconut.

7.   Sprinkle chocolate chips over the coconut.

8.   Repeat steps 4-7 for as many layers as you would like.

9.   Put the finished cake in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes to let everything set up. Enjoy!