Miss Lopez's basic knitting steps

Please make sure to thank all the nonas who have been helping their grand-daughters with the knitting.  They are amazing.  I know that my knitting is basic compared to their expertise; but together we can make this wonderful art enjoyable.

These are Miss Lopez's knitting steps:

We need to start with the cast on, which is the base of our knitting project.  
Figure out how wide you want your project to be.  Make sure you make the right amount of loops:) For a simple scarf about 30 loops will do, depending on the size of the needles:)  I like to work with big needles as you can see on the videos below.  

Start by making a slip knot:

Now you cast on this way:

Once you establish how wide you want your scarf to be, then we are ready to start knitting.  I chose  a brown yarn to make an oversized brown scarf, which will match a cool hat I got!  
I ended up making 50 loops because I want my scarf to be wide :)

Same way as we did our casting on, but this time the loop that we are pulling through is going to the needle on the right, to create our patter.

So this is how we start our knitting:

Make mistakes, have fun and we will meet again next week!

Knitting Club part 2

Hi everyone,
Thank goodness is Friday!  and thank goodness we survived it!  
Our knitting is coming along.  Even Though some found it somewhat frustrating, we are not giving up.  Keep practicing this week-end, watch my videos and be patient:)

Here are some of the pics I took today (actually Miss Santilli was taking the pictures:) )

I got a picture of Adamo!!!!!

Thank you Adamo for videotaping me this afternoon:)  Thanks to him I am able to share these videos with you:

It may be a little difficult at first just don't give up.  Practice-Practice-Practice.  I promise this will get easier:)  


Have a great week-end!
Miss Lopez

Knitting Club #1

Our first knitting lesson was not too bad. We were all very eager to learn. Some of our girls found out very early that knitting is a very difficult thing. I found out that knitting can be pretty stressful. I've always felt like it relaxed me. Today was an experience. We had some tears, towards the end of our first club meeting, we had lots of smiles.

Here are some pics of our meeting:)

Miss Santilli was one of our members!  She picked it up too:)

Many of our girls were able to begin what we call the cast on/cast off/Binding. So many weird ways to call the making of the foundation or the first row of stitches on your needle. We will work tomorrow at recess once again. I can't wait to see how the boys will handle it...they were very curious too and some tried to start it too:)

 Here is a quick video of what we learned today:

Thanks Alexia for letting me videotape your hands:) 

Remember to first make the loop you need to make the other stitches:)

I hope the video can help those girls who want to practice tonight.

Miss Lopez

p.s: I actually don't mind recording my voice anymore. I think I sounded pretty cool!  It was also my first time doing a voiceover...what do you think?? :)

Je pratique mon français

Avant d'aller faire dodo, je voulais partager quelques sites internet pour pratiquer le français.  Vous pouvez les utiliser pendant les cinq jours pédagogiques:) 

http://www.wismo.ch/Histoires-interactives
http://exercices.free.fr/francais/gram/nature/kooshies.html
http://www.lasouris-web.org/primaire/signets_2.html
http://www.iletaitunehistoire.com/genres/contes-legendes

...à mercredi:)

Mme Lopez

Parent/Teacher Meetings

Thank you for taking the time to come and meet with me on Wednesday. I know that we all have very busy schedules, but sharing your time with me to discuss our munchkin is really appreciated.

Our meetings are limited to 10 minutes. So look over the report card ahead of time.  Write down any questions/concerns you have and bring them with you to discuss them with me.

These meeting, wrongly named Parent/teacher interviews, are clearly not interviews but team meetings. You and I are on the same team. We are both advocating for your child. Our common goal is to find ways to support your child so that they can excel.

In order to respect everyone’s scheduled time, I will be running a timer to keep me on track. If we feel that we need more time, we can set up another meeting where we will be less rushed. 

 I really am looking forward to meeting you.

Here are some pics of what we were up to today:

Daily 5

 Using Lego and playdough to practice spelling our words

"Really you don't like to get your picture taken?"

"Nope! Me either!"

Editing Ed

In previous years, whenever I said "it's time to edit our papers!" I always heard a universal groan that included my myself!   I always dread trying to tell the kids that the papers they had worked so hard over needed some tweaking.
They don't want to add, correct or fix anything. They think their piece is just fine.
I knew I needed a plan, a way to get them excited about editing. What could possibly make them want to see red marks on their papers? I needed someone to "save the day", so I decided the kiddies needed a new friend...someone cute, yet not too cute.  I needed someone who liked to leave his mark.
Enter Editing Ed:

Who can be upset with a wild haired, google-eyed character -even if he is marking up our papers with red ink.
Along with Ed, this afternoon we were introduced to peer editing. We needed to edit our piece "Where is Miss Lopez?" We focused on a three-step strategy for peer editing, providing compliments (1), (2) suggestions, and (3) corrections.  We critiqued our work; we suggested improvements and we used Ed to correct our spelling, punctuation and capitals:)

I did not hear any groans, but I saw lots of smiles: