Our weeks just keep flying by! Thanksgiving will be here before you know it. As usual we had a very busy week. We finished up our unit about data and graphs this week and will begin to learn how to regroup when we add very soon. In reading, we are studying about communities; rural, urban and suburban communities. We decided we are definitely a rural area. We began our year long project of composting this week. We put red worms in our compost container and began feeding them. Their first meal was old lettuce and cabbage. We can't wait to use their castings for our greenhouse plants next spring.

We were so glad to be invited to the gym by the high schoolers as they honored our veterans this week. We are so thankful for what they have done for our country.

We also had a cooking project this week. After reading Thundercake Patricia Polacco we made our own (it was even a rainy day when we made it - although we didn't have any thunder). It had a secret ingredient in it (tomatoes) that made it look a little gross when we were making it , but it turned into a nice chocolate cake when we were done. MOST of us really liked it.

We do want to get a "shout out" to our epals in Australia. We have enjoyed getting our emails and look forward to corresponding throughout the year. We hope our blog will let you get to know us just a little bit more.

Week of November 1, 2010

What a great week we have had. We are reading a historical fiction book (and we know what that is:) called, Where's Kitty. It is a great story about a much earlier time in our country. We really liked the part where one of the characters tells a man stuck in the mud with his automobile to "get a horse!" and that "automobiles will never replace horses." In math, we are still working on gathering and showing data with graphs. Friday, though, we took time out to open our classroom bank and store. Trayvon was our banker, and what a great time we have shopping. We are looking forward to November and studying the beginnings of the United States - with the pilgrims. We also want to especially thank Bob Fisher, one of our bus drivers, for making us a bench for one our book nooks. It was made from an old church pew.

Week of October 25, 2010

It may have been a short week, but it was an exciting one. Our heads changed into pumpkins and we wrote stories that explained how that happened! We made ghosts, and we had a fun Halloween party. We even had witch's brew! Thank you to all the parents who donated their time and goodies!

Probably most importantly, we had parent-teacher conferences. It was good to share with you the "data" our students have been collecting to show you the progress they have made. It was also exciting to show parents the results of our MAP testing (measures of academic progress). We are a really smart group of kids!

Week of October 18th

We had a great week of learning and fun. We had a lot of fun during red ribbon week where we wore crazy hair, red hats and shirts. In reading, we are learning about our nearest star, the sun. Ask one of us why the sun looks so small, even though it is huge (it would hold a million earths). We really enjoyed having Rawley and his mother bring in their mastiff dogs. They helped us see what the real Mudge would look like in Cynthia Rylant's Henry and Mudge books. We liked hearing about their obedience training and seeing the dogs in action!

We are working on graphs in math and learning how to record our data on pictographs and bar graphs.

In science, we are continuing our study of the sun. We watched as solar cars run strictly on the energy from the sun, and we watched as our HUGE solar bag floated in the air because the sun warmed the air in the bag. What fun we had. (Sorry! Our pictures of this did not turn out)

We are looking forward to next week and parent/teacher conferences. We have our data folders ready to go to share the progress we have made sp far this year.

Week of October 11, 2010

Our weeks continue to fly by, and we continue to work hard (with a little fun thrown in!). We are reviewing odd and even numbers, and we are working on using correct punctuation when we write. We work every day on our reading, trying to become better readers, and, in the process we are learning about our nearest star, the sun. Our major fun consisted of our O.R.E.O. project where we tried to see how high we could stack OREO cookies and then to see what we could make out of OREOs. Check out our website at murraycsd.org to see more of our creativity!

Week of October 4th, 2010

What a week we have had! Homecoming week means a lot of craziness! We had some wonderfully creative costumes this year. I'm sure the judges had a very difficult decision to make every morning. The parade was fun as always, and we love seeing all the Murray fans out to show their support!

We have finished our basic reading inventories and the results will be discussed at conferences. Mrs. Miller was VERY pleased with the results---what a smart bunch of kids in Second Grade this year!!! We have finished our computer testing as well, and those results will be shown at conferences also.

In Science, we really did a good job demonstrating the phases of the moon. Just give us a flashlight, a pencil, and a Styrofoam ball and we will be happy to show you what we discovered.

Our annual O.R.E.O. project is this next week, and we look forward to seeing how high we can stack our OREOs and what kinds of things we can create with them. If we have any leftovers, we are going to make OREO dessert! YUM!!!

Week of September 27, 2010

What an exciting week we have had. We have begun our computer MAP testing, and we are excited to try to reach the magic number on each of our tests. We have also taken our Basic Reading Inventory Test where we read stories and answer questions with our reading teachers.

But probably the most exciting thing this week was to finish our family research and our Heritage Taste Fest! We had many different dishes to sample; from family favorites to dishes from the countries we have researched. What a tasty way to end the week. We had passports to make sure we did not miss a country, and we had recipes of our dishes to share with everyone. We want to thank all the parents who provided the food and came to see the students' hard word and share in the fun.