Seed Art

Today we spent the afternoon doing a seed art project.  It was lots of fun and everyone worked very hard.  We talked about two words, perseverance and persistence.  We needed to keep both of these in mind as we worked.  All of the projects turned out very well!  

Writing!

Recently we started working on grammar just after Whole group Literacy and just before lunch.  We do 5 problems each day.  Two are editing and rewriting a sentence and the other are questions about word families,  compound words, analogies etc.  So far, it seems like lots of fun!

This afternoon we had time to work on our final copies of our How To . . .  project.  We are writing a edited copy and adding illustrations.  We will hang out projects in the hall. 

Friday we. . .

Here is a review of Friday in pictures !

We had FOUR Respect Stick winners on the playground!  WOW!

We learned about collecting data, representing it and finding the median!

Discussing the data.

We got to construct parachutes!

One step at a time . . . good work!

Carefully assembling!

Working together!

Almost done!

Students were able to launch them and we talked about how the parachute and air interact.  Ask your child if they can describe how and why the parachute works.  

Balloon Rockets and The Book With No Pictures

Today we had the chance to learn about air with Mrs. Kath.  We used balloon rockets.  See if your child can explain the experiment and what they learned.

In Library today Mrs. Anderson read a book to us.  It was very . . . um, interesting and funny! 

Science Switching

This week we have been learning a lot about Air and Weather from the other Second Grade teachers.

Tuesday - Mrs. Hinderer taught us a lot about the moon.  See if your child can tell you a few facts about the moon.

Wednesday - Miss Olson taught us about clouds.  She read us the book Cloudette by Ian Lichtenheld.  She also showed us Pebbles Go where we learned more about clouds.  See if your child can tell you about the book along with a few facts about clouds.

Thursday - We will learn about Balloon Rockets with Mrs. Kath.  We are excited to have this experience!

Estimation and How To ...

Today we did another preview lesson for unit 3 in math.  We started talking about Estimation or Rounding.  This is a hard concept for kids, but they did a good job giving it their best.  We talked about estimation means "about how many" or "about how much" and that we would use it only in particular situations. 

We practiced by using the number line to decide what number we would round to.  For example, if the number is 38 it comes between 30 and 40, but is closer to 40.

Serious thinking going on!

Playing College - recording our thinking in math journals

We also continued learning about writing directions.  I asked the kids to write directions for going down a slide.  Next, we went outside and I followed their directions.  Some directions were more clearer and more specific than others. 

We came inside and wrote a clear and specific list of directions.  Today, the students got to do the prewriting for their project.

Finished product!

Roll it! Make it! Expand it!

Today we previewed a topic in our next math unit:  Place Value!  We spent time talking about the names and values of the places in numbers, i.e. 643 means 6 hundreds, 4 tens and 3 ones.  It also can mean 600+40+3.  We played a fun game to practice our new skills!  See if your child can tell you how we played.

Students have two pieces of homework, it's pretty easy for them.

Science Experiment

Today we started studying Air as a part of our Air and Weather science unit.  We used some common objects to experiment with air.  As students experimented they noticed things about air such as air takes up space, you can feel air, air is all around us and air is invisible.  Science sure can be fun!

Air takes up space!

Air can be used to hold things together! 

Empathy and a New Student

We will be having a new student join our class on Tuesday. 

As a part of preparing, we read a discussed the book The Brand New Kid by Katie Couric.  It is about a new student and his feelings.  The part of story that we really talked about is when one student in his class decides she can help him fit in and she gets to know him and spends time with him.

We also started our Empathy unit.  The first lesson included:
          - practice reading someone's feelings based on verbal, physical and situational clues.
          - recognizing different people can have different points of view and feelings on the same situation.
          - understanding that people's feelings can change within the context of a situation.

Happy Monday!