T is for Tamales and Texas!

Hey friends!! I had the BEST day today. This morning I got to visit two of my favorite teachers. I started in my friend Hannah's kindergarten room. I got to teach a mini-lesson on tamales! Sounds funny right?! She is doing holidays around the world and today was Mexico. I suggested instead of doing the poinsettia that we used to do every year maybe change it up with some tamales! So I came up with the idea of reading the book Too Many Tamales, making a tamale craft and completing a graph. 

I spoke with the kids about Mexico and what being Mexican American means. We live in South Texas so they are very familiar with Mexico and Mexican traditions. We share different Mexican holiday traditions and read the book Too Many Tamales. For the craft, the kids decided how many tamales they were going to "make", colored them, cut them out and glued them to a holiday themed paper plate. (I couldn't find tamale clip art so I just made my own, I was so proud! Ha!) Then the kids filled out the sentence stem and glued them to a black piece of paper. 

 I had the kids work on a tamales practice page too.

We also did a tamale taste test and graphed if we liked tamales or not. Most of the kids liked the tamales! :) 

I love the way Hannah displayed them too. :)

 I took a bunch of pics of Miss Hannah's room! I made her a bunch of Dr. Seuss inspired classroom decor like: ABC posters, color word posters, shape posters, number posters, sight word cards and transportation cards. 

I LOVE her "Leader in Me" style truffula trees! So cute!!

These truffula trees are used for goal setting. She has a little barbaloot that tracks their progress! So cute!!

After I left kinderland, I went to my friend Liz's classroom to give a speech about The University of Texas! I met my friend Liz while we were in college at UT, we were in the same cohort. She is amazing!! She teaches 3rd grade now and she is fantastic! Her school's theme is "College Starts Today" and each classroom "adopted" a college. Luckily she got UT! She kind of insisted since her room was already decorated in Longhorn decor. Here are some pics:

I love her door!!

Liz and I posed outside her classroom. Don't judge my giant baby belly! I'm only 22 weeks, ahh! I cannot imagine 40 weeks!

On my way out I saw this cute display!

It was such a great day! I love peeking into other teacher's classrooms! If you're interested in the tamale printables, you can pick them up here. Happy Holidays Y'all!