April 14, 2014

Hi Friends!  Long time no see :o)  I will try not to make this too long, but we have some catching up to do!

Writing
We have been working hard to finish our writing about our favorite books.  We met with groups of friends to vote on which piece of writing was the most convincing about why a book should win an award.  After voting, we gave the book a custom award and even designed a medal to go with it.  We then working on writing our introductions, conclusions, and using a checklist to edit our final copies.  We will be sharing and celebrating our writing on Wednesday!

Math
Time's a tickin! We have been telling time to the hour, half hour, and quarter hour over the past several days.  Our clock even got a fancy makeover to help us with that :o)

Soon, we will learn to tell time to the 5 minutes.  2nd graders are learning this for the very first time so please be intentional about asking your child what time it is every now and then!  The more interactions they have with clocks the better :o)  Use terms like half past, quarter til, and quarter after to extend "time" language into their everyday lives.

Reading
In reading we are learning how to summarize by telling the most important parts of a story.  We use the terms Somebody, Wanted, But, and So  to help remember what those important parts are.  See the chart below if you would like to clarify what those terms mean to us (also ask your kiddo what clarify means ;o)

Science
Our science test will be tomorrow.  We just finished up a short unit on weather, where we talked about the water cycle, the seasons, weather tools, and severe weather (and how to stay safe during it).
Here, we observed a puddle to see if it would evaporate by the time we came back to school.  It did! Why?  Because it was super sunny and the warmer air helped the water evaporate:

We created a tool we can use to tell which direction the wind is coming from, and then used a modern compass to read our results:

We made a few posters about wet/dry weather and also some about weather safety:

Finally, we made a tornado in a jar (big hit).  Ask your kids how to make one at home if you'd like to see for yourself!  Its just a jar, dishsoap, and water!

Reminders
Because we do not give written homework, it is important that the assignment page inside binders are getting signed daily :o)  Thanks and have a great week!