Cooking with Matter

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Week of January 30, 2012

Mrs. Miller has really gotten behind in her blogging, and I want to apologize and promise to do better the rest of the year.  But instead of trying to catch up, I decided we would just take it from here!  We did a study of magnets, and for a fun project, we made magnet puppets and  presented short plays with them.  Thanks for all the donations of cereal boxes!

 We had our 100th day of school.  We had several projects, from deciding what we would be like when we are 100 years old to how many times we could say the alphabet and clap in 100 seconds.  AND of course, our 100th day celebration would not be complete without our 100 balloons stomp.  We have a lot of fun and really enjoy watching the teachers get out there and stomp.  Congratulations to the third graders for winning - they stomped all their balloons in the shortest amount of time.

We had our first tasty Tuesday for the year and we made snowman Sundays.  They were so much fun...and very tasty!  Thank you so much for all the donations of items! We could not do it without you!  We hope to have a cookbook with our recipes and pictures by the end of the year. We are certainly looking forward to the rest of our creations.

Week of November 7th, 2011

This might have been a short week because of the football game at the Dome, but it was a busy one!  We have really had a good time seeing all our "disguised' turkeys that have arrived back in the classroom.  You will notice that we even have one dressed up as a Murray Mustang football player - wonder if he went to the dome with the boys?  We also had a hula turkey, a turkey disguised as a macaw, and many other fun disguises (stop in and take a look!).

We also had a wonderful Veteran's Day program presented by the high school Honor Society.  Zoe was very proud her dad was a veteran. 

 In social Studies, we have been learning about our neighborhood, state, country, and continent.  After reading Me on the Map, we made our own Me's on the map and made booklets about how we fit in this world. 

In reading, we continue to work with lots of different people on our comprehension and phonics skills so we can become better readers.  In math, we have finished up our review of addition and subtraction, and are working on data and graphing. During the next week, we will be studying the pilgrims and how things "used" to be!  We will finish up with our traditional Thanksgiving feast with the First Graders.  We can't wait!

Week of October 10th

The time sure does fly by!  We have been very busy in second grade.  We have been reviewing our mental math strategies in addition and subtraction and now are working on place value.   We are doing a super job knowing our tens and ones!

In reading, we are working on making connections with our text and asking questions to help us understand the story better. We have started skills groups during our reading time where we work on skills we find we need a little extra time with.  We really like them because we often get to play a game to help us practice skills such as long and short vowels.

In science, we finished up studying the moon cycles, and we are now studying the sun.  We really liked demonstrating the cycles of the moon with flashlights and Styrofoam balls.  Did you know that some sunspots on the sun are MUCH bigger than the earth? 

One of the most fun things we did this last week was making our pumpkin heads.  We will be writing stories this week about how our heads turned into pumpkins.  If you would like to see pictures of all of us, go to the second grade website and click on pumpkin heads.  We hope our pumpkins last until conferences as we would like parents to pick them up when they come!

Conferences are fast approaching, and we are excited to show you how we have done so far this year!

Week of September 12th and 19th

Wow! The last two weeks have just flown by!  We have had homecoming, BRI testing (our reading test) and our MAP testing (the computerized testing we began last year). Whew!  We are glad that is all done, and now we can get down to the business of looking at those scores and deciding where to go with our instruction.

We are getting into the swing of Daily 5 and doing a great job of it!.  We know that you don't get better are reading and writing unless you read and write --and of course, build our stamina in those areas.  We have also been doing our research for our heritage unit and have looked in books and online.  Our reports should be done and ready to show off at our tasting festival on Friday (at 1:00).  Hope you can come. We can't wait to share what we have learned.  Don't forget to send Mrs. Miller those recipes so we can get them in a cookbook!

In math, we are working on addition and subtraction facts, and math fact families.  We are getting the hang of them, and they will come in handy as we move on in math skills. We also have our classroom bank and store this week. We are learning a lot about checks, credits, debits, and SHOPPING!  It is 21st century skill building at its best!

 Besides homecoming, we did manage to have a little fun. We had a "camp out" in our room Friday, complete with smores and sleeping bags!