School Stories - Pinatas, Rainbows, and Poems

This week, I decided to focus more on my third grade class since last week was all about fourth grade... Quite on accident, I assure you. Sometimes, one grade is just more interesting than the other. As crazy as things are already getting as I have to leave my kids to work on their own while I practice for Christmas with the older grades, we're still finding plenty of time to have fun and keep things interesting.

Here is the saga of the 3rd Grade piñata... Which I documented through the daily vlog I'm doing over on my YouTube channel.

First, you see my kids begging me to do a piñata because they apparently hate the Lion King... Who hates the Lion King? It's the best movie EVER!



Then, when it came to actual piñata-making day, none of them had brought the balloons they were supposed to, so I sort of rant about that and describe the version of a piñata we did that I wasn't sure would actually turn out....



Then, I managed to use masking tape and pure magic (I guess) to keep it all together, and somehow we had an actual piñata that actually survived a few blows....

They're all smiles (and rabbit ears) so they must be happy about how it turned out!

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We're also doing a unit on poetry in third grade, so part of their homework involves them writing poems. Although I only require 4 lines, I sometimes get more, like this masterpiece about cooking, done as a shape poem (which we did in Spelling class).




I am cooking
If I don't cook I don't eat.
My mom don't cook because
she don't lik and my brother to
is not in the house. I love
cook because I can do pizza
cake and spagety.

(by Angeles)

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This picture I took from right outside my bedroom one morning. It was raining as I was getting ready, and then as I was rushing to go downstairs where my ride was waiting, I caught sight of this beauty and decided there was always time to take a picture of a rainbow.

Sidenote, the easy access to other rooftops often makes me think of Aladdin....

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My third graders have also been working hard on a science project in their own homes about the needs of plants. Unfortunately, I only got pictures of two of their finished projects which they brought to present to the class, but here they are:

Angeles bought two similarly-sized flowers and put one in a bag and didn't water it...

She determined that plants need sunlight and water.

Juan Jose chose to grow plants from seeds, one of which was placed in a plastic bag. This gave me a good opportunity to talk about how seeds hold nutrients so that plants grown from seeds don't actually need sunlight at the beginning. I further showed that with Jahir's project, which was basically the same as this one. But, his plant that had sunlight was bright green whereas the other was much more dull in color.

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Last Monday, it was the director's birthday, so they had a surprise party here at the house. I decided to spend most of the afternoon painting my nails rather than doing any writing work, so here is the result of that.....

Yes. That's a feather on my ring finger.

No, it actually wasn't that hard to do.

That's it for this week. I'm expecting this next week to be just as exciting, because when you're working with kids, you just never know what's going to happen next!




Please be praying:

- That God continue to move in the hearts of the kids as we have daily worship and prayer times.

- That everything continue to come together smoothly for the Christmas show, which is in less than 4 weeks already!

- That I continue to seek God first in everything.

Also, quick praise report: Last week, I was suffering from some pretty intense lower back pain, but thanks to a chiropractor friend in my Bible study, I am now completely pain-free once again! :D

School Stories - Science Project, Twins, and More!

I meant to start updating this weekly, but totally forgot last Sunday, so here's two weeks worth of fun school stories, with pictures!

In science, we were learning about plant reproduction, so they were all asked to bring in two flowers so that in case some of them forgot, there would potentially be enough for everyone to do one.... One girl remembered and showed up with two roses... They're lucky I love them and wasn't actually giving points for it. So, it turned into a group project and competition (boys verses girls, of course) to find as many different parts of the flower as possible.

Opening up the rose to prepare to tear it apart.....

..... And the rose has been destroyed in the name of science.

If you couldn't figure it out, the girls' project is on the left and the boys' is on the right. :)

The boys technically one with more parts labeled......

But I also considered the girls winners for pure artistic work.

In reading class this past week, we were reading about weird jobs, including line waiters, egg smellers, chocolate engineers, and.... zombies. Since the beginning of the year, a couple of the kids have been stumbling across this picture randomly and insisting that it was my boyfriend, so at their request, I sent it to my actual boyfriend and said that it was my real boyfriend. He responded with a series of angry faces and guns, then said my boyfriend was disgusting.... And then a few hours later sent me a picture that said "I'm so glad I know you" so I'm pretty sure he was over it by then.... :D

Probably no reason for real jealousy here......

This precious young lady is Gissel. Her and I apparently are twins or at least psychically coordinate our accessories before coming to school...

Matching pink headbands....

.... and it's hard to see, but we're both sporting butterfly earrings.

(that's Kyle photobombing our twin selfie)

If I've learned anything teaching, it's that kids are crazy, and they have some pretty interesting thoughts on the way things work. This masterpiece was done by Dennisito. It's apparently me, accidentally pooping out a baby.... As much as I wish it were that easy right now, I can imagine a future me will wish it even more.....

Also, I'm a little concerned because it appears that the baby is going down the drain....

That's all I got for you this week. Hopefully I'll have some more fun stories and pictures for you next week.


Please be praying:

- That everything goes well with organizing, planning, and practicing the Christmas program.

- That the construction on the church continues to move forward so we can be in our bigger sanctuary very soon.

- That God continue to fill me with Him and everything that I need to pour out more of Him onto the kids.

- For the school, that everything works out with the math teacher position.