¡Esquéletos festivos!

The 8th graders finished their día de los muertos skeletons and they look fantastic! We voted on the best skeletons from each class and the most festive and creative skeletons. Which are your favorites?

3rd period

5th period

6th period Great job, 8th graders!!

el día de los muertos

This week, many people in Mexico, Honduras & Guatemala celebrated el día de los muertos, the Day of the Dead. This holiday is hundreds of years old and began with the indigenous people of Mexico (the people who lived there before Columbus arrived). The people celebrated a day to honor the memory of their loved ones who had died and people who celebrate spend weeks preparing for this holiday.

The 7th graders learned more about this holiday and saw a día de los muertos celebration in Oaxaca, Mexico. They learned about ofrendas (altars), cempazuchitl (marigold flowers-"The flower of the dead"), velas (candles), calaveras de azúcar (sugar skulls) and chapulines (fried grasshoppers!).

The 8th graders were already familiar with this holiday and they are making skeletons to decorate our classroom. The skeletons are colorful and festive, not like the scary skeletons that Americans use for Halloween. Visit our blog next week for pictures of their finished products!

Tener phrases

This week the 8th graders reviewed the verb tener and combined it with new vocabulary to use special expressions with tener. Here are some of the phrases we learned:

Tener frío=to be cold

Tener calor=to be hot

Tener suerte=to be lucky

Tener sueño=to be tired

Have a fun, safe weekend!

la ropa y los colores

In 7th grade we have been practicing adjective agreement in preparation for our test next Thursday. We are working on making sure that our adjectives match the gender and number of the nouns they modify. How would you describe these articles of clothing?

El milagro en la mina

This week thirty-two Chilean and one Bolivian miner were rescued from a mine in Chile after being trapped since the first week in August. The mine collapsed on the miners and many days passed before rescue workers were able to contact them to realize that they were surviving.
Chile's government immediately began to formulate a rescue plan, but initially thought that the miners wouldn't be able to be rescued until December. Chile spent over $20 million on the rescue effort, but it was worth it because this week they began the daring rescue. The miners were pulled up one by one in a small capsule just big enough for one person.
If you watched any of the footage, it was very emotional to watch each miner be pulled up and hear the siren that went off each time a miner emerged.
This event sparked international interest. Chile is now looking into tighter safety regulations for its workers and these thirty-three men have to try to re-adjust to their lives. If you didn't follow the story, click on some of these links below. You can also look for articles on Google-there are many to choose from!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/chile/8063049/Chile-mine-rescue-timeline.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11475156

2010 Washington D.C. trip

Last weekend 66 of the 8th grade students went to Washington D.C. for the weekend. We saw many of the sites that D.C. has to offer and learned a lot. This was my third year to go on the trip and I learned and saw a number of new things this year! We had a great time, but it was good to get back into a normal routine at school this week.

. Here we are back at home with our souvenir t-shirts!

Día de la raza

We don't have school on Monday for Columbus Day, but in many Spanish speaking countries the holiday is called día de la raza. The day marks Columbus's arrival in the New World and the first meeting of Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the New World. Many view Columbus's arrival positively, but there are others for whom it meant the destruction of their lives as they knew them. Sometime this weekend, think about what Columbus Day meant for Europeans in 1492 and what it meant for the indigenous people too.