Peru and New Orleans...My last trips of the summer!!!

With today being the first day of fall...which I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, I thought I'd share some pics of my last 2 summer trips. This year I had traveling fever! In January I went to Disney World, in June I went to Cabo, in July I went to Peru and in September I went to New Orleans. I'm hoping to convince my family that we need to go to Hawaii for Thanksgiving ;-).

Peru was FABULOUS!! I absolutely loved it! The people were so nice and friendly. My friend Martha and I travel once a year to a cool destination with a travel group called Golden World Tours, usually during Spring Break. We've been to Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Ireland, Croatia, Italy and this year PERU!!!! I love to travel! One of my favorite quotes from Pinterest says "Travel is the only thing you buy, that makes you richer" and I couldn't agree more.

This is Lima the capital of Peru...not my favorite place because it was always gloomy!! This is the Love Park in Miraflores. Love quotes and statues.  

 Then we went to Cusco, Peru, where the elevation is no joke. But it was beautiful! We went to the Cathedral of Cusco, Saksaywaman and Plaza de Armas. One of my best friends Melissa, also came on the trip with me. She's an awesome Pre-K teacher at my school.

Saksaywaman

Plaza de Armas

Native with her Llama

Cathedral of Cusco

Melissa & I

Then we made the long day journey to Machu Pichu. We DID NOT do the 4 day hike where you camp out and could DIE!! Well...maybe not die, but out of shape people should not do that journey lol!! We did the train ride (2 hours), then bus ride (1 long scary hour) to the base of the mountain and then walked up the steps to the top of the mountain (not sure how long that took since I could barely breath and didn't look at my watch. Let me tell you that was hard enough...I really should have gotten in shape before going lol.

On the way to Machu Pichu

Melissa & I on Machu Pichu

Martha, Yadira, Melissa & I.

Machu Pichu!!!

WE MADE IT TO THE TOP!!!

We then went to Puno and to Lake Titicaca, which is the highest navigable lake in the world...cool huh? We also went to Uros the floating islands on Lake Titicaca. They use bundles of dried reeds to make the islands, their homes and boats.

Floating Island - Uro People

Peter enjoying the view

Lake Titicaca

And now for my last trip...it was a bachelorette party for a my friend Gaby. We had so much fun...and New Orleans isn't one of my favorite places. I've been 2 other times and thought I'd never go back, but I have changed my mind about NOLA!!! The food was out of this world and the people were so nice and friendly and just joyful. I might be a little to old for Bourbon Street, but I still had the BEST time there and also saw some of the weirdest things that I will probably never see anywhere else.

I can only show a few pics because this is a teacher blog after all lol. 

Martha & I on the trolley

The Gang at dinner

I won a game and the prize was CANDY!!!!

Not sure who this is!

If you're still reading that's AWESOME!!! But now I'm off to bed...gotta have some energy for my 26 kiddos tomorrow.

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Love - Sandra

 Helloooo, there!!!  After a rough first three and a half weeks we are finally breaking radio silence!  It’s been a bit of a rocky start for everyone at our campus.  Everyone in Kindergarten is over, Sandra and I have 26!  On a good note the students are really well behaved and for that we are very lucky.  It’s a year of many changes as well-new principal, assistant principal, librarian, counselor and a wonderful new kinder teacher, too.  Welcome Amber Gates, a wonderful addition to our kinder team!  With all this talk about new, let me show some of my new stuff.  When I started to set up my room I noticed my 7 year old calendar pocket chart had seen better days.  So I went I found this nice BIG one at staples.

  Also, I had been thinking about making myself a new schedule as well.  Sandra and I have caught the chevron craze like many other teachers we know.  So I got busy and created a new one for us.  The only problem was that I didn’t measure the cards and let’s just say they’re a bit too big.  I will eventually make a chart so that they don’t overlap, but with 26 kids that’s going to have to wait a little.  It does the job (temporarilyJ)!

I also changed my writing criteria chart and coloring rubric.  I felt like I needed fewer steps, but I only ended up making it 6 steps instead of 9, lol!  Old habits die hard, I guess.  My coloring rubric is an idea I saw on Pinterest (I Love Pinterest)!  I also decided to use Sandra’s Pinterest idea on how to sit on the carpet.  She has a little girl so I decided to make mine a little boy.  He actually looks like a student I have in my class this year, which I did on accident.

 This week we started our one of our favorite themes…Apples!!!  I have a few morning message activities. I apologize for my awful handwriting.  I’ll tell you what having these extra kids just makes me feel like I’m in a hurry all of the time, it takes us so long to do most basic things.  They are slowly but surely catching on!  I have a circle map (in the shape of an apple), a math comparing two objects (we used two apples), and an apple labeling activity, which our students then used to label the parts of the apple.  We are giving this away as a freebie.  Yay, free!

For the life of of my I cannot get this picture to flip over!  Click here for the freebie.

The last apple activity that we did was our taste test and graph.  We tasted 4 types of apples.  The students then had to choose their favorite apple and take a square that was the color of it.  I turned this into a mini cut paper activity.  The students had to use a square to make a circle, I gave them the stem.  We then used their apples to stick to our favorite apple graph.  Red delicious swept the competition!

Last but not least I made a quick little center to share with all of you!  Learning the parts of a book, in both English and Spanish, and also it is...Free!!!  

Just click here and it will take you to ourTPT page so you can download it.

Well friends have an awesome rest of the week!

-Cindy