It's Already Winter Break!

Making perspective portraits

Hard to believe that we are already at the end of December, and that signifies that it's time for Winter Break! Despite frigid temperatures and seemingly endless days of indoor recess due to the bone-chilling cold, the kids took it in stride and enjoyed their days of indoor recess with games and fun activities. We were more active than usual with all the indoor recess, and the students enjoyed lots of GoNoodle action videos. They also enjoyed our final round of Art Adventure, thanks to our parent volunteers. They created their own creatures using model magic and other supplies. This week, we finished up quite a bit of content, including a science project on different kinds of weather, the moon, sun and stars. We learned about perspective in art and created a "catching snowflakes" self-portrait. Students had a contest for cleanest desk groups last week, and the winning group got to choose the class-wide reward for this week. Our Angelfish group won, and they chose cartoon-drawing. Students enjoyed this immensely, and it was wonderful to see how different everyone's Greg from Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Olaf from Frozen turned out. We had a lot of fun learning and cooperating together. I hope everyone has a safe and happy break!

Art Adventure creations

Olaf

Greg

More clay creations

Adding information to our science booklets

Indoor recess games

Look at all of the new things we learned about air and weather!

Up, up and away!

Students had the exciting opportunity to learn about various kinds of clouds this week, how they form, and what kinds of clouds produce which precipitation. We got a chance to even try and identify the various types of clouds that showed up in our skies this week. The kids really enjoyed the craft that we did. They now know the names of various instruments that meteorologists use to measure wind, temperature, and precipitation. We also had the wonderful experience of participating in all-school BINGO this Wednesday! At our last PEACE assembly, the school got the chance to spin the prize wheel for showing Jaguar Pride. The spinner landed on all-school BINGO, and the kids had a blast! There was a lot of community that we built through it, and lots of positive sportsmanship and fun to be had. We're looking forward to another fun week next week!

All-school BINGO

We're very focused on marking the numbers correctly!

End of November

Wow! It's hard to believe that we are already to the end of November and the end of Trimester 1 in second grade! After the long weekend for the Thanksgiving holidays, we got things rolling very quickly this week. Students got to create an art project with various kinds of pasta; the artwork was all very creative and different. Some students created patterns, others made pictures, and others had fun creating designs. In reading, students are learning more about our country. Ask them about famous Route 66, a road that spans over 2,000 miles through 8 different states in the United States. And in science, we talked about wind, clouds, weather, and will create a cloud project early next week. We also learned about thermometers, temperature, and took a measure of the temperature in our classroom and compared it to the temperature outside. We found that there was a difference of 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Brrr! Enjoy another long weekend!

Finding evidence in our reading to support main ideas

Art Adventure

What we know about clouds

Caldecott Celebration

Last week

and this week were full of Caldecott fun--projects, books, voting on books, creating banners for our parade, and much, much more! In math, we started learning strategies for subtraction, and will continue learning how to break apart and reform numbers for awhile. In writing, we spent a lot of time writing about different Caldecott books. The students voted on their favorite books, and from those favorites, we formed groups to represent books in our Caldecott parade. What a festive time! All the other students in the school lined the hallways to see the first and second grade classes march through wearing costumes, crowns, kitten ears, and carrying banners and books for their groups. We saw quite the turn out! Then we got to do various Caldecott-inspired activities, where students did a roll and color-by-number, created Caldecott-themed hats, and got a tutorial on how to draw a Wild Thing from a real book illustrator! It was quite the treat. Thank you for those who came and helped and came to the parade--I hope you enjoyed it! For those who were unable to make it, I hope you can live a little bit of our day through the myriad of photos included below. Have a safe and happy weekend!

Make Way for Ducklings Illustrating Project

Our Wild Things

Making Wind Socks to decorate the hallway!

Artists at work

Making our banners for the parade!

And the winner is....

Counting the Ballots

One of the highlights this week for the kids was having our classwide election process: Duck or Grace for President? As a few students were absent on election day, the kids got to learn about the absentee ballot process as well. When all the votes were collected, we had an official ballot count, with a first reader of the ballot, a verifier, and someone to make the tally marks on the board for each candidate. The winner by 13 votes was.....Duck! We also had our first Art Adventure this week, focusing on a paper-tearing and gluing project that the kids greatly enjoyed. Finally, we have devoted much of our time to reading Caldecott books and completing projects associated with them. This next week, students will vote on their favorite book, and they will get together in groups to create banners for our Caldecott parade during the week of Thanksgiving Break. Hoping everyone gets a chance to enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend!

Kitten's First Full Moon

Kitten's First Full Moon

Art Adventure

Art Adventure

Kitten's First Full Moon

Voting Rights

This week, we focused largely on voting--the process, why we vote, and what is important to keep in mind in order to be an informed voter. This was represented by reading a book called Duck for President and having discussions as to whether the Duck or Farmer Brown would be a better president for the farm. Students then had to register as voters on the farm before they could cast their ballots. Students really got into the spirit of things, bringing up some interesting arguments, and making banners and signs for the candidate they supported. Finally, we practiced cooperation by doing a sorting activity where students learned about the things our leaders are allowed to do and things that they should be in order to be a good leader. Next week, we will read a book called Grace for President, and vote on whether she or Duck would be a better leader. There is a lot of excitement and anticipation to see who will win in our classroom characters


election....

Being Good Citizens

Leaf Creatures

This week was full of new exploration--in reading, we talked about our star, the sun, and in math we finished a big chapter on different addition strategies. Students also learned about what makes a good leader, and how we elect leaders in our communities. We talked about how we will not discuss any of the election politics in class, but instead will do the election process by voting for things like our favorite book characters, or kickball vs. basketball for recess. We enjoyed taking out the social studies books for the first time--another new tool in our exploration of learning! We read with partners and then talked about what we read. We read the book Leaf Man and exercised our creativity by creating our own leaf creatures. Students also had the chance to celebrate their latest writing projects. They are a wonderful and engaged audience! We're looking forward to reading books next week like Duck for President, and voting on whether or not we think Duck or the Farmer should be the leader of the farm. Hope you all have a terrific weekend and enjoy this week's snapshots!

Exploring our Social Studies books

Celebrating our Writing

To be a good citizen....

Acting out stories

Though it was a short week this week, we were still able to learn a lot and have fun! We began our unit on citizenship, focusing on what it means to be a good citizen, and looking forward to what qualities good leaders should have to help their community, and how the process of voting works. We read a book about the Pledge of Allegiance, its history, and its importance in our country. In writing, we practiced a new technique to help us remember to take small steps in our writing: We acted out our stories! Though a quick activity, the kids enjoyed it, and it got their writing going on an active note. Next week, we look forward to working more with grouping in math, celebrating our next pieces of writing, and lots more about citizenship and government in social studies. Hope everyone had a great long weekend!

More acting

"I pledge allegiance...."

Air and Weather, Oh My!

We had another full week of learning! We had our first writer's celebration, and then learned how to take a tiny topic and start writing a small moment story. We began grouping with base ten blocks and are using what we know about 10's to add double digit numbers. In science, the kids had a blast--quite literally with a blast of water in some cases--doing experiments that taught them about the properties of air. Ask them about air pressure, air resistance, and compressed air. We learned about all of it, and had lots of fun doing it! This coming week, we look forward to beginning our unit on what it means to be a good citizen, which will lead into what leaders in the community are supposed to do, how laws are made, and what the process of voting looks like.

"Fall" into Writing

One of the biggest accomplishments this week was starting our air and weather unit in science, and beginning to dive into our writing for second grade. The students learned about the writing process (Think of an idea, plan, write, revise), and really blew me away with their levels of description with writing. They are coming along so far and I can't wait to see what they will have as a finished product next week! We also had lots of fun with our science experiments this week. Students got to hypothesize about what they thought would happen when I put a ping pong ball on the top of a hairdryer and turned it onto the low and then high settings. Then they observed and drew pictures of the experiment. They also got to try one on their own by predicting which object would travel furthest on their desks: a styrofoam ball, a cotton ball, a feather, and a piece of tissue paper. We then talked about our findings and results and discussed what we've learned about air so far. Air is invisible, and it takes up space. It also can make things move. Looking forward to seeing you all at conferences this coming week and the week after that!

P.E.A.C.E.

This week we began so many more new second grade things! We learned what good scientists do: ask questions about the world around them, use what they know to make a hypothesis, and try experiments again and again, looking carefully at results. We also began writing "small moment" stories. Students got to read a story about The Veggie Monster, where a little boy has to eat a whole THREE peas for dinner. Then we brainstormed ideas of what we could write for our own small moments. You can see some of their ideas below. We ended the week with a fabulous PEACE assembly, where we got to see a book about peace performed by some of the upper classmen. We saw the kindergarten classes walk in with the eighth graders. We showed our Responsibility and Cooperation during the assembly by being safe, quiet listeners! Overall, another fun week of learning!

Tiny Topic notebooks

Math groups!