Best Birthday Ever!

Thanks for making me feel so special today! I had the best birthday ever! I came in this morning to find even more decorations on my whiteboard.  Mrs. Carsner and both 2nd grade classes spent some time this morning decorating the room with black balloons and black streamers. I received flowers from 3 different students, lip balm for another student, and several sweet cards. I bought a cake to share with both 2nd grade classes, and Ben brought cupcakes, too! Sorry, folks, but we had a lot of sugar today. We also watched the parade practice, where I received the surprise of the entire student body singing happy birthday to me.  Ahh....now for a good night's sleep before tomorrow's field trip.

Fun Day!

I started out a little grumpy today, but seeing the faces of my "Tweetie Pies" made me feel better. For our Bible lesson, I gave each student some clay and told them to build a statue dedicated to God. They came up with some nice ideas, such as stars, crosses, hearts, etc. Next, I told them the story of King Hezekiah and how he told the people to destroy the idols they had created. The students had to destroy their statues. It was fun to watch them smash, squish, and pound them!

We have been learning about the parts of a friendly letter so students have been learning to write their own address. Today, they wrote letters to Santa, which I promised to deliver.

Tomorrow is my 50th birthday and the students are just as excited as I am about it. They wrote a nice message to brighten my day.

Mayflower Building

Mayflower Building
Click the link above to see a slideshow of some photos from our Mayflower building STEM project. Thanks for everyone for the hands-on help and for the materials you sent in. We had a blast!!

More Landforms

Kamryn's mountain

Skylar's island

Ben's edible Grand Canyon

Angelina's volcano

Olivia's island

Landform Presentations

Landform projects were due yesterday and today some students were able to share theirs with the class. (The rest will share tomorrow.) It appears that they enjoyed this project, so you can expect more hands-on projects like this one in the future. Here are some pics of those who presented today.

Landforms

This week in geography, we are learning about landforms. I am adding some web sites that your child can use to learn more about landforms. Today they played a concentration game with landform cards. Both cards had the picture of a particular landform, but one had the name of the landform and the other had the definition. As they played, they learned new information. After playing the game with a partner, they colored the cards.

We are also learning about Author's Purpose. There are 3 main reasons why author's write and we can remember them with the acronym PIE: persuade, inform, and entertain. Today students cut and glued a foldable into their interactive notebooks about author's purpose. Tomorrow, they will search the classroom for examples of different purposes.We also learned some rules for making the plural forms of nouns, which we also put in our interactive notebooks.

Water Cycle

Today we learned about the "Bossy R," that tells vowels to make an angry sound. Bossy R is polite, though, because he lets the vowel go first. When one group was at guided reading with me, they were generating r-controlled words and decided to add "fart" to the list. Oh, my! We created interactive notebooks during writing today. The notebooks will become a place to collect all the spelling rules we learn this year. We are doing something similar for science and social studies, as well. In our science notebooks, we wrote a definition for evaporation. Tomorrow we'll add condensation. We made mini water cycles-in-action. We drew the sun, a cloud, and waves onto the outside of a sandwich baggie, added a little water and blue food coloring, and taped the bags to the window. We will watch what happens as the sun hits the window in the mornings. As the water evaporates and condensation accumulates, we can tap on the bag to watch the droplets combine to make bigger drops that will get heavy enough to "rain." Cool, huh? The students are super excited!

Contraction Surgeons

Students had fun becoming surgeons today, operating on two words that needed to be joined to form a contraction. They wore "surgical masks" and used bandages to join the words.

Contractions

We will be learning about contractions this week so I added a contraction game to my links (see the right side bar). I am also happy to share with you that your student will now be able to take AR tests in our classroom. Students are able to take tests on a first-come/first-served basis in the morning, during their computer center time, and during SSR.

Pumpkin Patch

Despite the dreary weather, we had a blast at the pumpkin patch. I loved being Miss Frizzle, driving the class on a field trip! The kids were well behaved so I was able to focus on driving us there safely.

Pumpkin Pie Tasting

As promised, today was the day to roast pumpkin seeds. Students estimated the number of seeds from the largest pumpkin that we cut open yesterday. Today, we counted the washed and dried seeds as we put them into the pan to roast them. I believe the actual count was around 357 seeds! Students also got to taste pumpkin pie (with whipped cream)! I think some of them enjoyed the pie more than they thought they would.

Pumpkin Fun

Both 2nd grade classes worked together to guess how many seeds would be in 3 different sized pumpkins. We then went outside to cut the pumpkins open to confirm our guesses. Students enjoyed removing the gooey seeds from the pumpkins. Mrs. Carsner and I washed the seeds from one pumpkin and are letting them dry overnight. Tomorrow, we will roast the seeds and taste them, along with pumpkin pie.

Bug Funeral

During recess yesterday, Kamryn discovered that the ladybug she had picked up off the slide was dead so she and her friends decided to give it a proper burial. The friends joined hands and circled the burial site. McKenna borrowed Jordyn's Bible and read a passage. Mrs. Carsner and I were close enough to hear what was being read, and surprisingly, the passage was about death and returning to God!

Scavenger Hunt

We had a fun, although loud, day. Our Bible lesson dealt with the covenant God made with his people. I made a covenant with the class, and everyone shook hands on this, that if they could stay on green all day I would give them a small piece of candy at the end of the day.

We have been learning about the life cycle of frogs in science. Yesterday, we read a book about amphibians, learned about their life cycle, and made a flip book. Today, we did a scavenger hunt about frog facts. I hid 18 fact cards. Students recorded answers to questions as they found the fact cards hidden around the room. At the end, everyone was missing fact card #10. I never did find where I hid that one so I had to give them the answer. Here's a picture of some of the "hunters."

Great Week in Science

After studying lima bean seeds (and planting them), we also studied corn. We learned that the threads of the silk are connected to the kernels and that the kernels are seeds. Today we related eggs to seeds. Both have protective coatings, contain the beginning of new life (an embryo), as well as food and nutrients. Students should be able to tell you why supermarket eggs will not hatch, no matter what you do to them (hint: they haven't been fertilized). We worked with Mrs. Carsner's class to investigate eggs today. Each pair was given an egg, a bowl, and a plastic fork. Students used plastic forks to simulate the tiny chick pecking its way out of the shell. Once broken open, they identified the yolk (the food for the embryo), the embryo (the little white part on the yolk), and the water and nutrients (the white). Next, we watched a Reading Rainbow video of the book Chickens Aren't the Only Ones. It was messy but fun!

We Planted Beans Today!

After learning about the life cycle of a plant and all about beans, students had the opportunity to plant bean seeds today. We are very excited to see how long it will take for the little plant to poke through the soil.

We had a fire drill early in the day. Students did a fabulous job!

We are learning how to identify the topic, main idea, and details in reading passages. I tried to carry this idea over to writing by using a hamburger graphic organizer in which the top bun represented the topic sentence, the bottom bun was the closing sentence, and the insides (meat, lettuce, tomato, etc.) were the details. Students were so confused by the hamburger! They thought I wanted them to write about a hamburger! Oh, my! I will try a different approach tomorrow.

I started using Class Dojo today. You should have received an email from me. If you respond to it you will be connected and will be able to see remarks about your child's behavior throughout the day. The students were really excited about it. Each time I give someone a thumbs-up, the computer makes a sound that gets everyone's attention. This gets everyone on task in a hurry. So far, I love it!! It is a little difficult to get to the computer too often during the day and my Windows phone (BLAH!) does not have the app. 

Science Unit - Life Cycle of a Plant

We started our science unit on the life cycle of plants today. We read a book called One Bean that introduced us to what happens to plants and how to begin the process. We examined lima beans -- ones that had been soaked overnight and some dried ones. Students made notes about the skin and the insides of the beans.

The 4th Little Pig

Students waited all week for this day to arrive. Throughout the week we have been discussing the differences between the city and the country. We have also read several versions of City Mouse/Country Mouse and the Three Little Pigs. For our STEM project today, students pretended to the the 4th little pig, who we assumed to be a country pig. The only building materials he had available were marshmallows and toothpicks. Students had to work together to build a dwelling that would be strong enough to withstand the Big, Bad Wolf's huffing and puffing. We had lots of fun with this activity.

Sentence Writing Activity

Mrs. Keane was our guest teacher during writing today! She introduced an activity in which students were given a card with a word on it. Side one had the word beginning with a lowercase letter and side two had the same word beginning with an uppercase letter. Students had to arrange themselves so that they made a sentence, making sure that they turned their card the proper way, showing only an uppercase letter at the beginning and ending with proper punctuation. They were also challenged to create a different sentence using the same words in different order. They did a fantastic job!

Practicing Spelling Words

I was looking for new and creative ways for students to practice their spelling words and came across a site written by a mother/teacher. She lists 75 ways to practice spelling words. Check it out. You might not have all these materials at home, but let your child choose a way that appeals to them for that nightly practice.
http://www.momto2poshlildivas.com/2012/10/75-fun-ways-to-practice-and-learn.html

Fun Friday

I heard the most incredible phrase uttered several times at the end of the day, "This was the BEST day ever!" Wow! I think it was because of the STEM engineering challenge that students did at the end of the day. Their goal was to build the most accurate Minecraft Creeper as fast as possible. The class was divided into 3 groups (I used an online random name picker to determine the groups). The parts of the creeper were printed onto cardstock and were very tiny. I almost scrapped the idea because I was afraid the pieces were too small and would be too difficult to fold. I decided to try it anyway, so I gave them practice pieces earlier in the day that were larger. They did so well with the larger pieces that I knew everything would be alright. I loved that students were helping friends in different groups, giving them tips on how to fold the pieces and how to assemble the creeper. Look at these happy, satisfied faces!

 

Guest Readers

We had a great day in 2nd grade! We were a little confused about whether or not special attire was required for PE, but talked to Coach Cox and found out that 2nd graders can wear uniforms on PE day as long as they are wearing tennis shoes. Phew! That saves lots of time!

We have started Writer's Workshop and are discussing the types of things students might want to write about and what to do when you can't think of anything. We have a special folder for our writing. Works in progress are kept in the left side and finished pieces go on the right side. Most students love sharing their great writing with their classmates.

A couple of students had asked if they could read a book to the class and today we had the perfect opportunity. I was so impressed with the fluency, the animation, and the ability to stop and show the pictures! It's definitely an advanced skill! (I apologize...Google apparently isn't in the mood to upload my photos today. I'll try again another day.)

Happy Hump Day!

It was a great day in second grade! Students gave some great examples of how to follow our classroom rules, and acted out some funny poor examples (how not to behave). I introduced a couple of centers to the class. They are not big fans of my random groupings. It seems that they would prefer to play with the same friends at all times. They made the most of it after the initial shock and had some fun.

One of my favorite things to do is to read aloud, using different voices for the characters, so it was gratifying to have a student tell me today, "I love how you read with the voices!" (I think it was Kamryn.) They LOVED the book Interrupting Chicken! Ben even created a skit about it.

Before lunch, pairs played a dice game in which each student rolled 1 die, they added the total of both dice, and the first person to correctly call out the answer received a tally point. I noticed most students giving tallies to their partner even when they won and the partner lost. Very kind, indeed.

There was a cicada that crash landed near a group of students during recess. A huge group of kids tried to help him back onto his feet and get him feeling better. He ended up with a huge hole in his chest, so we laid him to rest underneath a tree and said prayers for him. Tammy took lots of pictures of the scene.

In the afternoon, we played "Cooperative Musical Chairs." In this version of the game, no one is "out." Instead, when the music stops, everyone must make room for everyone else on the remaining chairs.