Geography, Georgia and Geometry!

Yesterday we read this book to start our geography unit.

We finished this book today to help define important geography terms.

In Library we learned about the famous artist Georgia O'Keeffe.  Ask your child about the story.  It is a part of the Star of the North Book Award.  We are reading 10 books with Ms. Zbacnik and will vote on our favorite later this year.

This afternoon we visited Ms. Kath and used her Zome tools to learn more about geometry and 3 dimensional shapes.  It was lots of fun!  We sure have enjoyed learning from the different teachers this week!

Geometry Fun!

This week we are switching classrooms to learn special lessons related to our geometry unit. 

Yesterday we went to Mrs. Hinderer's room to learn about symmetry.  We made special creations to show a line of symmetry with a shape.

Today we visited with Miss Olson to learn more about 3 dimensional shapes.  We used marshmallows and toothpicks to make shapes.  We also cut out a pyramid.  Ask your child what they learned!

Duniya Drum and Dance

Today we had a very special assembly.  Duniya Drum and Dance performed for us and shared music and drumming from Guinea, West Africa.

We learned about the two types of drums and the sounds made by positioning your hand in different ways. 

Some students were invited up to play a real drum.  We all had a chance to learn and practice the rhythms and drumming patterns.

At the end, the entire audience learned a dance sequence and performed it all together.  It was a fantastic assembly!

Fun Wednesday!

We had half a day of school today, but we really packed in some fun!

Our turkeys were waiting for us this morning as we arrived. 

We had to get ready to play All School Learning Bingo with our Fifth grade buddies.  We had a word list and had to make our own boards. 

At 10:15 a.m. we got to meet our buddies and play Bingo with them.  It was lots of fun to be all together.  We played four rounds and had to listen to see if we could figure out who the Mystery Callers were. 

It was time for lunch and time to wear our fabulous turkey hats!  As we discovered, they weren't perfect, but we made the best of it and had fun!

After recess we read Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet. 

Ask your child what this book was about.  We watched a video clip of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. 

Turkey Hat Time!

This week we have been working on our Annual Second Grade project - TURKEY HATS!  This is always a favorite project for the students.  It is quite complex with many steps to complete.  Of course, the last step is to have your hat fitted and wear it! 

Step 1:  Trace the turkey body on to two pieces of brown paper.

Step 2:  Cut out your turkey bodies.

Step 3:  Color your turkey.  Some students made their turkey realistic and others were quite creative.

Step 4:  Trace feathers for your turkey.  Cut them out.  Color/decorate both sides.

Gobble, Gobble, Gobble!

Late this afternoon we fitted each student with their hat!  Pictures will be up tomorrow!

Letters of Thanks

Today we worked on writing Thank You notes or letters.  First we read Circle of Thanks by Susi Gregg Fowler and Peter Catalanotto.  Ask your child about the plot of this story.

We talked about some words and phrases we could in writing our letters and made a huge list of people we could thank.  The list was very large!  Then we started writing!  Many students wrote to their First grade teacher or even their Kindergarten teacher.  It was fun to see what each student said in their letter.  Many students wrote more than one.  If the person was a school person, students hand delivered their notes. 

Library Research

Today we had a chance to work on research with Ms. Z in the library.  We are learning about Thanksgiving to add to our Symbol Book.  We decided to focus on three areas of Thanksgiving:  Thanksgiving Long Ago, Thanksgiving Today and Food.

Ms. Z taught us about using the Table of Contents and Index to help us locate information within a book.

We had time to look in our own books for specific information.  We wrote our findings in our research notebook.

We will practice doing a little research each month so prepare for our big project later this year.