Baby Alexis is here!

Hello families!  I wanted to share the exciting news that my baby girl arrived last week on 2-18-14.

She is healthy and an absolute blessing to our family.  

7 pounds 6 ounces- the exact same as her brother!  20 and 1/4 inches

Thanks for your support and the target gift card!  Your thoughtfulness is so appreciated.  I can't wait to bring her up to school to meet the kiddos in April!

Writing, Counting, and Inventing, oh my!

As you know, we have been writing letters to friends and family about our opinions on the books we are reading. We decided to make a writer's inspiration wall to help us think when we get stuck. The kids love looking to the wall to get ideas from their peers' writing.  Writing rotates on the wall so that we can all have turns being featured for inspiration. 

We are getting really good at counting, recognizing, and sorting coins.  We learned that $1.00 equals 100 cents, and that we can make those cents lots of different ways.  A flip book we created is helping us remember the most common combinations of coins to make $1.00.  

Before beginning our inventions yesterday, we learned that people and animals can use their bodies as simple machines.  Groups were given animals to research and then present to the rest of the class about how they use their bodies as simple machines.  

Now that we know how the simple machines work, we can focus on these awesome inventions these scientists are creating!  Some use simple machines, and some don't. Either way, we are learning the process of creating something new.  So far, we have 1. Noticed a problem (at school), 2. Made a plan, 3. Chosen materials, and today we got to 4. Build it and test it out.  The kids had SO MUCH FUN building and testing their inventions today! Their was science language flying around everywhere in their conversations- it was awesome.  We will spend tomorrow building and testing again. Here are some previews of inventions "in the works." 

Since we trashed the room while being inventors, we took a few minutes at the end of the day to clean the room and our messy desks!  We are spick and span now :o) 

 

Happy Friday!

We had a great 4 days of learning and investigating this week!  Thumbs up if you enjoyed the warmer weather, I know I certainly did :)

     TUESDAY

Our team all-star this week was Samil.  He shared his poster with us, and we learned that he loves the zoo, Grant's Farm, washing the car, recess, and Transformers (the book)!  Samil brought in some yummy Bosnian candy bars called Bananko to share with the class.  They are made of chocolate and bananas!  We loved that he shared some of his culture with us!  

Our friend, Mr. Allen, came on Tuesday to teach us our final lesson about how to be a good friend.  We learned that friends should always laugh and have fun together, as long as we are being safe and healthy.  We got to practice laughing and having fun by creating silly imaginary animals and giving them funny names.  We will miss Mr. Allen and are grateful that he spent some time teaching us how to be a good friend.  Our friendship rules are:

Include others.

Give everyone a chance.

It's okay for friends to be different.

Friends should have fun and laugh while being safe and healthy.

Remind your children of these rules frequently, we all know it's easy to forget sometimes. 

WEDNESDAY

Now that we know all about technology, we are ready to learn about the simple machines that help make some of these awesome inventions possible!  We created a lever by placing a ruler on top of a pencil (fulcrum), and tried to lift a book off the table by moving the lever up and down.  We learned that the closer we move the fulcrum towards the weight, the easier it is to lift! 

THURSDAY

Opinion writing is in full swing around here!  For the past week and a half or so, we have been writing letters to our class, telling them our opinions about the books we read.  The kids LOVE finding letters inside books in the classroom library and reading their peer's opinions.  

    On Thursday we began writing letters to anyone we want!  Mom, Dad, Aunt Susie, our BFF, teachers...the list is endless.  This has really catapulted our writing to the next level!  They are so excited to write all of you letters about their books.  If you get a letter, don't hesitate to write back- they will find value in their writing if they know their intended audience is reading it and responding.

FRIDAY

   Today was Rams day! We had a great time at the assembly! I was reminded that eardrums REALLY DO vibrate during the screaming contest to see which side of the gym was loudest.  I think my ears are still ringing :) 

 

Have a great weekend everyone!  

Note: Conference letters went home this week. If I have not contacted you by Monday, and you would like to request a conference, please contact me and we can set up a time to meet on conference night. 

Valentines day!

Thank you to everyone who came to our Valentine's Day party! The kids had a great time!  I want to give a big shout-out to Eli's mom- Mrs. Wendel, who planned all the fun games and activities for us! It's obvious she put a lot of time into making sure the kids would have a great time at the party 😃

      

THURSDAY

     We continued our lesson about technology by finding it in magazines and making posters.  We worked in groups to come up with ideas about how the technology we found helped solve problems. 

Thursday was dress like a teacher day.   Nick and Jacob looked slick in their shirts and ties- they chose to dress like Dr. Hamby.  Kaeleigh and Haley decided to dress up like me, wearing boots and pink shirts :) I think they all looked great! 

Spelling tests for next week are: 

Group 2- Tuesday

Group 3-Wednesday 

Group 4- Thursday 

Group 1- Friday

Please study those words frequently, since many groups have those tricky homophones in their lists this week :) 

Enjoy the holiday weekend and I will see everyone on Tuesday!  

Investigating Technology

Yesterday, we started a new unit all about Technology and simple machines. We learned that technology is all around us! Something as simple as a pencil is technology, because it was invented to solve a problem.  We watched a video about Alexander Graham Bell, and how he used technology to solve a problem he had. He wanted people who were very far away from him to be able to hear his voice, so he created the telephone!

We went on a tour around our classroom trying to find pieces of technology, and then wrote about the problem that may have caused a scientist to invent those things. 

Haley even noticed that she can hold technology in her hands! 

Look around your house and see if you can find technology in unlikely places. 

Many of you have requested a class list for valentines day. Here it is: 

We will spend a short amount of time on Friday decorating bags for valentines before the party.  If your child would like to decorate a box at home, that is absolutely fine.  Students are also welcome to bring in additional decorations for their valentines bag if they choose to.  

Playing Catch-Up!

Welcome back to the blog everyone! I think I FINALLY have this figured out :) I have had so much fun getting to know all the super second-graders over the past few weeks.  

Last week, Eli was our all-star of the week. He brought in Krispy Kream donuts for us, showed us his pinewood derby car, and read us one of his favorite books, Turkeybowl, by Phil Bildber.  Thanks for the great read, Eli! 

On Wednesday of last week, we celebrated the books we wrote during our information writing unit.  We wrote books about something we knew all about that had to do with force and motion.  We had several books about soccer, hockey, gymnastics and dance.  Others wrote about cleaning, playing video games, and fast animals.  We had a great variety of books and the kids loved sharing them with each other during our celebration.  They set up their published books on book stands and we took a book-walk around the room.  We read our classmates' books and then wrote reviews to go with them.

This week, our new All-Star is Kaeleigh! She kicked off the week by sharing her wonderfully colorful poster, complete with tie-dyed tape, 3D stickers and a bedazzled name! We learned that she loves Sea World and the Cardinals, Mac and Cheese, and Art class.  The class loved her awesome poster, which was a piece of art in itself! 

We began a new unit in writing this week- Writing about Reading. We have been writing letters about our favorite character in stories and also our favorite parts inside books.  We are addressing our letters to Class 49, so that other readers and writers can read our opinions about the things we read.  We are simultaneously learning how to be a close reader so that we can dig really deep into our books and find out all we can.  

We finished our unit in Economics in Social Studies and ROCKED the test- good job everyone! We will be moving into science and discovering simple machines for the next few weeks, so keep your ears open for details on machines we are building in class.  

Last but certainly not least, we will begin a new math unit all about money on Thursday.  

This week's spelling test schedule is:

Team 2: Monday (had to do a Monday test bc of our field trip on Wednesday)

Team 3: Tuesday 

Team 4: Thursday

Team 1: Friday

Don't forget that we are going to Powell Hall on Wednesday! Please try your best to get to school on time- the bus is set to leave at 8:45.