CHRISTMAS CARD COMPETITION

What Does Valentine's Day Look Like?

Valentine's Day: What's in a Heart?

Valentine Day is coming! For some cultures, it’s a day of romance, of hearts and flowers. For others, it’s a Day of Friendship. The day is Saint Valentine’s feast, and many cards and flowers will be exchanged (as well as chocolates and other gifts).
       The day has several symbols. One of the most popular is the heart, which represents love and caring. The heart is used in any number of expressions. Below is a list. See if you can think of why “heart” is used to describe these ideas.
1.    “She has a heart of gold” means that she to cares about other people.
2.    “He has a big heart” means the he is a giving, generous person.
3.    “She is cold­-hearted” means that she doesn’t feel sympathy for other people.
4.    “He wears his heart on his sleeve” means he shows everybody how he feels about someone (or something).
5.    “Cross your heart and hope to die” means that you swear something is true or that you promise to do something.
6.    “She cried her heart out” means that she cried a lot because she felt really
badly about something.
7.    “They are eating their hearts out” means deep sadness about something.
8.    “Eat your heart out!” is a sarcastic expression meaning “Too bad you can’t [be someone][do something].”
9.    “I sympathize from the bottom of my heart” means that I feel really deep sympathy.
10.  “He had a change of heart” means that he changed his opinion or his mind about something.
11.  “Have a heart!” means “Be compassionate, be understanding.”
12.  “My heart was in my mouth!” means I was very nervous or I was scared.
13.  “Try to set your heart at rest” means to try to relax or stop worrying.
14.  “She’s really soft-hearted” means she’s sympathetic or compassionate
15.  “He really took the Broncos’ loss to heart” means he was very disappointed by the loss.
16.  “She’s learned the poem by heart” means she has the poem in her memory.
17.  “He is a football fan, heart and soul!” means he’s a very enthusiastic fan of football.
18.  “In her heart of hearts, she doesn’t believe that” means in her most private thoughts, she doesn’t believe something.
19.  “He lost his heart to Mary” means he fell in love with Mary.
20.  “She has her heart set on going to China” means she really really hopes to go to China.


Winning Christmas Cards

        The annual student Christmas Card Contest took place in December. Students from levels 1 - 3 made cards that showed great creativity and imagination. 

         The judges met a short time before Christmas break to decide the winners. Silvia Moreno, Carmen Coronel, Beatriz Rodríguez, and, as guest judge, Susan Lowery, discovered the choices were not easy to make! After a lot of deliberation, they agreed on the following results:

Christmas Almost Didn't Come

       Christmas is a major holiday in the U.S., celebrated in many different ways. The season begins the day after Thanksgiving and is enjoyed by Christians and non-Christians alike. But in the beginning, in the early 1600s, there wasn’t any Christmas celebration at all!
The Pilgrims in Massachusetts in the early 17th Century did not originally celebrate Christmas. They were in America to build a new society based on the Bible and they knew there was nothing in the Bible to say  December was  when Christ was born. They knew Christmas had roots in pagan winter solstice festivals like the Roman Saturnalia. They disapproved of the feasting and parties at Christmas.
         The General Court of Massachusetts made celebrating Christmas punishable by law in  1659. The law stated: “Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas, or the like, either by forebearing labor, feasting, or any other way upon such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for each offense five shillings as a fine to the country. "[A fine would be imposed if anyone did not work, or held a feast, or celebrated in any way, Christmas.]
          Even after the law was repealed in 1681, New Englanders were slow to accept Christmas. Giving gifts and parties and even decorations were considered to be pagan customs. As late as 1870, Boston schools held classes on Christmas Day!
          The same wasn’t true in Virginia. Jamestown was settled in 1607, before the Pilgrims, by people who hoped to get rich. They had no principles opposed to Christmas revels. But they didn't do much celebrating. For four years, they starved. There was no Christmas feast; they were lucky if there was food at all.
          Then, in 1611, they started to grow a new tobacco plant. It wasn’t the plant the local Indians grew. It came from a strain grown in the Spanish colonies of Trinidad and South America. How John Rolfe got the seeds he brought to Jamestown is a mystery—there was a death penalty for anyone who sold such seeds to a non-Spaniard! Rolfe crossed his Spanish seeds with the local tobacco and produced a plant well-adapted to local conditions. At the same time, it was more pleasing to European taste and had a higher nicotine content than the native tobacco. The first shipment went to England in 1614. Their new kind of tobacco became their gold.
           With life secure, merriment and Christmas celebration quickly followed. Parties and festivities just like they had enjoyed back in England enlivened the Virginia Christmas season.

The Thanksgiving video has some words in it that you may not know. Some of them, like "pilgrim," are not words that we use a lot in ordinary conversation. Others, like "harbor" and "fisherman" are terms we may use and hear often. If you want to look at words that the video uses, go to the Quizlet link here:

http://quizlet.com/30011282/american-thanksgiving-flash-cards/

and check them out.

Thanksgiving: Read, listen and play!

This interactive book has information about the U.S. Thanksgiving celebration. There are videos and facts about the history of the holiday and the food people eat as part of the feast.

http://chagall-col.spip.ac-rouen.fr/IMG/didapages/thanksgiving/index.html

American Thanksgiving Story

HALLOWEEN VOCABULARY

Hi students,

Here you are some vocabulary cards about Halloween that Susan has made for you. I hope you enjoy them and learn new words. They are very useful for this "terrifying week".

Click HERE.

LEARN NEW THINGS ABOUT HALLOWEN!!

Click here to learn more things about Halloween.