Silly Shapes and Cinco De Mayo

Hola! Hopefully everyone had a fun-filled Cinco De Mayo! I teach ESOL this year and have seven sweet Spanish students in my class. I felt that it was important to learn and discuss this holiday even it was the 6th day of May. We had a great time learning about the Mexican culture and making festive maracas to celebrate!                                Pinterest Maracas

The lesson went really well, but I think their favorite part was learning that the word cucaracha means cockroach in spanish! They found this simple word to be hilarious! I was pretty surprised to see how interested they all were in the spanish culture. It was awesome! 

Did you see Jimmy Kimmel's Cinco De Mayo episode? Oh my my my... Too funny! I was shocked that so many people didn't even know what the term "CINCO DE MAYO" stood for. It certainly makes for a good laugh, though! 

REWIND <----------------  Back to last week. 

Now for a totally different topic... SHAPES

I'm not sure why, but teaching shapes is my least favorite math concept to teach. Strange, I know. 

Anyway, to introduce shapes I always like to give my students a few minutes to PLAY with their math manipulatives. This helps them to NOT play with them when they are using them as math tools. I allowed them a few minutes to build a shape picture. After everyone was done we walked around our "shape city" and took a look at what our peers created with their shapes. They really enjoyed this activity and it only took a couple of minutes. 

Many students even began composing and decomposing the shapes. Such smarties I have in my class! 

I managed to make it around the room to see all of their art and I was very rather amused when I got to this particular desk.... hmmmmmm

???? Really. Did you feel the need to use every circle available? Goodness Gracious! 

***For the most part*** everyone did a nice job and had a great time playing with shapes! Luckily, no one even seemed to notice how odd the "mature" shape-people looked. Thank goodness!