Ragamala Dance

This afternoon we had a special assembly.  The Ragamala Dance Company came and performed for us.  They performed a classical dance style from South India.  The did dances and showed us the seven basic dance positions.  The also taught us the hand movements they use.  These movements can be used to tell stories.  They used their feet as drums and wore bells on their ankles.  It was very interesting!

Balloons Over Broadway

This week we are busy creating and persuading.  We read the book  Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet.  This is the true story of the man who invented the big balloons that are used in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  He was very creative in developing the concept of the balloons and designing them.

Next, we invented our own balloons.  We had to think of something that is popular in books or movies or represents the time we live in.  We drew and designed our balloons.

Next, we will do our prewriting of our letter to Macy's asking them to consider our balloon as an addition to the parade.  We will have to come up with reasons our balloons should be included.

What We've Been Up To

The past few days have been so busy!  Here is a brief recap of what we have done.  Check out the captions for details.  Ask your child about what these pictures represent.

Sorting Attributes blocks in math.

Having a conversation about how we would sort them.

"I would sort them by ______________, because _________________."

We started Social Studies by learning about why we need maps, how a good map will have a key.

We learned about our brains and took a Kahoot quiz with the iPads.

Thinking about how to answer the questions.

Seeing the immediate results of how we did.

It was lots of fun!

We finished The Year of Billy Miller.  It was a bit sad and yet the ending was so good!

Letter Writing

This week we have been learning about how to write a letter.  We know the five parts of a letter as well as how to start and end a letter.  We have looked at many examples of letters and as a class, wrote Mr. DePrez a letter today.
 
To practice writing a letter we are writing to our Fifth grade buddies.  We have not met them yet, so we are introducing ourselves in the letters.  We are very excited to share our letters and meet our buddies in a few weeks.  

Two books that use letter writing to tell the story.

Working hard on our rough drafts of our letters.

We use our prewriting to help us write our first draft.

Three for Thursday

Here are the top three exciting things for our day!

3.  We had Library today!  Ms. Zbacnik read us the first Star of the North Picture Book Award book.  Click here for more information about the award and the nominated books.

Listening to Gaston.

We love books!

2.  In math we learned about the different ways we can represent a number.  We will need to know this skill and be able to do it quickly in our next math unit.

1.  We had a surprise, last minute indoor recess.  Most of our recess was outside, but in the last 15 minutes, it poured!  We had to come in.  We did Go Noodle on the computer.  We tried a new activity, called Cat Party!  It was hilarious!

Science - Wind and Seasons

In the past fews days we have been learning more about weather, specifically wind and the seasons.

Today, we took time to watch a few animation videos of how the earth moves around the sun causing the seasons.  We read a few books that explained the reason why we have the different seasons and we looked at PebbleGo! for some ideas about what happens in the seasons.  We ended the day illustrating a poem that described our favorite season.

PebbleGo!

Friday Fun!

Today was a busy day!  We were really trying to pack it all in before October slipped away!

In Literacy we reviewed story elements by reading the book The Plot Chickens.  We retold the story Hennrietta, the chicken, wrote.  See if your child can tell you the story.  

We wrote a paragraph about The Great Lakes in our Symbol and Landmarks book.  We had to do our best to draw a picture of The Great Lakes.  

While we had no formal math lesson, we did make calendar pieces for November.  We have to make the pieces and then make a pattern.  We will be exchanging our pieces with another Second grade class.

Then, we built and flew parachutes as a part of our Science unit all about Air and Weather.  We had to follow multistep directions to build the parachute and then be very careful as we flew them.  It was so much fun!

At the end of the day we had a fun directed drawing activity!  Ask your child what they made!

Happy Weekend!