Well this year has been off to a great start! I am loving all my "newbies" that I have been lucky enough to have in my class this year. After having the same students 2 years in a row and being on maternity leave, I knew it was going to be a big transition. However these newbies and our fantastic Mrs. Darling made the transition pretty seamless for me. So for that, I want to say THANK YOU to them!
Here we are during our first few weeks of school :)
Those last few pictures show the dry erase sleeves that I got in the target dollar spot. They are my new favorite thing! We just throw our paper inside the sleeve, grab our dry erase markers, and go to town. Not only does this save on paper, but it also is so engaging! The students LOVE writing with their dry erase markers... so much so that they often ask if they can do a writing assignment with them! Gotta love it! On a different note, check out my friend Takoda wearing a Cruz jersey! I was so excited when he walked into the classroom wearing it and I had to snap a pic of it for my boy Cruz at home.
My little Clarkie loved his first day of 2 year old preschool too!
We spend the first month of school learning class procedures, rules, and getting to know one another. One of our rules is the golden rule! It's all about respect; respect for yourself, others, and our environment :) We were so excited when a few of our classmates found "kindness rocks" outside on the Pashley playground. These rocks have become pretty popular throughout Burnt Hills (and other areas too). When you find a kindness rock you can keep it for yourself, give it to someone who needs it, or hide it again for someone else to find it. The idea is simple, kindness is contagious. Check out the video about Kindness rocks and the pictures of our classmates who found the rocks (both of them chose to hide theirs somewhere else!).
We also kicked off the school year with a few great science units and lessons. We just completed our weather unit. Our junior meteorologists reported the weather each day, learned about different types of weather and how to use weather instruments, and learned about the water cycle. They created their own thermometers, flags for testing the wind speed, and rain gauges. Take a look at the students taking part in some fun weather experiments!
We also created these really cool weather tools flip books. Each flap lists a different tool. When you lift the flap the students wrote facts and answered questions about those specific tools.
At the end of our weather unit we had meteorologist Alyssa Caroprese from channel 6 news visit the entire second grade. She taught them some more about what meteorologists do and showed them the "egg in the bottle" experiment. The students loved learning about the green screen and that even men need to wear make up on TV! Best of all is that the entire second grade was on channel 6 news the next morning, when Alyssa Caroprese talked about her visit and showed this picture!
A big THANK YOU! goes to Haleyann's mom, who also works at channel 6 news and helped me make the connection with the channel 6 meteorologist!
Another science activity was our fall scavenger hunt. The kiddos enjoyed working with a partner to find different parts of nature that represent fall. Afterwards the students saved three pieces of nature and wrote about how these things represent fall.
We also learned a lot about apples during the month of September. We actually had a day where we only did apple activities. We completed apple math sheets, read apple books, we tasted different colored apples, and created a table that showed how many people liked each apple. Our class favorite was yellow!
Then it was onto pumpkins and Halloween! We had a blast on Pumpkin Day. Thank you so much to all of the parents who came in to help out. The students measured and weighed their pumpkins, predicted and tested whether their pumpkins would sink or float, estimated and counted the number of seeds in our class pumpkin, estimated the number of candy corn in our skeleton cup (good job to Benson for winning the prize! He had the closest estimate (only 1 number away) when we counted them as a class at the end of the day), played Halloween Bingo with Halloween sight words, painted our pumpkins, and last but not least created a Spookley the Square Pumpkin craft. The day before Pumpkin Day we read the Spookley book. This is a great book that goes along with our kindness theme. It is about a pumpkin named Spookley who is not like the other pumpkins because he is square. All of the other pumpkins tease him because he is different. This makes Spookley sad, but he looks past this sadness when there is a terrible storm and all the other pumpkins start rolling away. Spookley saves the day by wedging himself between the other pumpkins and the fence. This could not have happened if he wasn't square. The other pumpkins were so thankful and so was the farmer who grew the pumpkins. The next year the farmer sowed those same seeds and all different types of pumpkins grew; pumpkins of all shapes, sizes, and colors. People came from all over the see this amazing pumpkin patch! The author writes, "oh what a garden variety makes" and the students learn an important message that my mom taught me when I was little- "Differences are what makes the world go round!" and not to judge a book by it's cover. What a great message!
And then we closed out October with Halloween. It was a great day! The second grade quad was turned into the "bat cave," just as it is every year. The students loved learning facts about bats and creating their own bat for the cave. Although the second grade teachers all dressed as bats on Halloween, I loved reading about different costume ideas that my students had for me. They were very creative, funny, and sweet! Be sure to click on the pictures so that you can see what the students wrote.
The Halloween parade was a blast, just as it always is. We had a few of my favorite visitors this year as well- My mom, Mrs. Manz, and my boys Clark, and Cruz. They dressed as T birds for Halloween this year. The weather cooperated and we had a great audience!
We also had a great time taking part in Halloween centers. Thanks to all the helpers that came in to run centers. We enjoyed making our step by step Frankenstein pictures, our witches with Halloween acrostic poems, our crazy looking monsters, and our decorated haunted houses.
I've decided that I probably have 1 year left where I can pick Clark's Halloween costume and then I won't have anymore control. I have to get in all the cute and matching costumes while I can! Hehe!
Happy Halloween everyone!
