Como Zoo and Conservatory

Today we went on a field trip to Como Zoo and Conservatory.  We learned that plants help us by giving us oxygen, food,  medicine and nutrients.  We help plants by making sure they have enough sunlight, giving a place to grow, giving them space, water and air.

Plant class

Making bath salts

Here are a few of the entries from our Special Times in Second grade books.  It is always a sign of a good field trip when they have lots to write about and draw!

The seeds have been planted!

We are very excited to watch our plants grow.  We have learned that plants need water, sun, air, space and soil. 

April 18th - We planted our brassica seeds.  We did this in small group with Ms. Anderson.  We had to get a little air into the soil before we planted the seeds.




We also planted our grass and alfalfa seeds.  We will watch these plants grow and compare and contrast their growth.

April 22nd - Even though we did not have school our plants were growing!

April 22nd - Here are the grass plants!  They are really growing fast.  We noticed you can see the roots growing down and making a spiral at the bottom of the cup.  They really enjoy the sunshine!

Making our first observations

Busy Week !

We have been so busy this week!  Here are a few highlights:

We started a new read aloud this week.  We are reading Clementine by Sara Pennypacker.  We love it!  Clementine is always getting into situations that do not go so well for her.

Thursday - We continued learning about multiplication by practicing fact families and cutting out fact triangles for multiplication and division.















Friday - We had the chance to play a game on the smartboard with Ms. Olson's class.  We reviewed contractions, compounds words, synonyms, antonyms and vocabulary.  It was lot of fun and we played a good game!

Friday afternoon was another chance to use the iPads to practice math.

















We also planted our brassica seeds and grass.  Be looking for a post about that next week!

Math Fun Friday!

We have worked very hard this year learning as much math as we could.  We are almost to the end of our  math series!

From now until the end of the year, we will be using Friday to do some extra math learning and play math games or use the iPad for math games.  We are able to check out 5 iPads at a time from the library.   I have the kids work in pairs on the iPads to do math games that are designed to practice skills.  Students who are not using the iPads are playing math games or working on puzzles.  

Interviews

 Over the past few days we have been doing another type of research.  We learned about interviewing as a way to gain information. 

 On Monday, Ms. Olson and Ms. Anderson interviewed each other.  We learned about listening as someone was speaking, taking notes and asking clarifying questions.

 Tuesday, we got to pick a topic to talk about with our partner.  The categories were Family, Holidays and Customs or Interests.

 On Wednesday and Thursday we met with our partner from Ms. Olson's class to do the interviews.  It was lots of fun and very interesting.

 We will write mini-biographies about our partner. 

Our books are ready !

Our books about Egypt are now complete!  If you would like to see all of the finished books please click here to connect to Ms. Zbacnik's library blog.  You will be able to see the books we made along with the books from the other 2nd grade classrooms as they are finished.

This was a great project and shows lots of learning on the part of the students.  Thank you to everyone who helped make this project a success!

Break time adventures!

Each day our class has about 5 - 10 minutes for break.  Some kids bring snacks to eat and others enjoy talking with friends.  Here are a few pictures from a recent break. 

Coloring is relaxing during break.

Enjoying a class book !

A recent favorite - Thumb war!

Playing a game during break !

Careful arm wrestling : )

Making a design is relaxing too !