Just a quick update...

Okay...

We did it, we finally did it!  The kids are finally taking tests and trying to reach their AR goals for real!  They LOVE putting the beads on their necklace for every point they get.  When they reach their 100% goal for AR, they put on a star.  When they reach their 150% of their goal, they get a GOLD STAR!  They love the gold stars!

I would like for all my kids to reach 150% of their goal, which averages around 18 points, or 36 books.  They are doing a fabulous job!  I am so proud of them.  Today, I took pictures of all the ones that have over 150% and the ones that met their 100% goal.  Well, I didn't post it yet, because I know tomorrow, I will have 2 more kiddos that will have reached their goals... so I will post pics tomorrow!

We are working on measurement in the classroom.  They had fun today trying to guesstimate what the temperature was outside and inside.  We passed around the thermometer and measured both inside and outside temperatures.  They are doing great with that.  Tomorrow, we will be learning about inches.

Tomorrow, I promise to post more pictures and update this blog more than I have been doing.  I need more hours in the day.

See you tomorrow!

Writing...

Writing is such a fun subject for me to teach.  Unfortunately with writing the students either LOVE to write or hate it.  I always have such a hard time finding fun writing activities for them so they can learn and grow to produce good excellent writings.  Sooooo, in my search for fun writing activities that will help teach them the different genres, I found this fun site that I am pretty sure they are going to love!  It is a great site from Scholastic and I hope it is one that won't go away for a long time!  If you get a chance go check it out!  For one of my workshops, I have these boards that they mix and match to come up with a sillly sentence. But for this, they have to come up with a story.  I am going to give it a try this week and see what happens!  I found this over at

Mrs. Chappell's 2nd Grade

Thanks so much Mrs. Chappell for sharing your great find!

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/storystarters/storystarter1.htm

100th Day of School

Today is the 100th day of school for us!  It is hard to believe that we have been in school for 100 days!  We did a few fun things this afternoon to celebrate being in 2nd grade for 100 days.  I needed a few more hours to do all that I really wanted to do, but instead, we did sorting and counting.  They counted by 10's and put all the things around the classroom into groups of 100.  They worked very hard and even got very creative when putting the items away!

Do you see the 100th day spelled out?  So cute!

They made different shapes with their blocks.

Look at all the groups of tens they had. 

They had a lot more than 100!

This group had a big job as well!  They decided to count the crayons to see how many there were.  In the end, they had over 600 crayons that they sorted by groups of 10!  They did a great job sorting them and putting them away!

How excited were they? 

They had the mini blocks and put them into groups of 100!

This group had the smallest pieces, but the biggest number out of the class!

They really had their work cut out for them!  But they did it with over 800 blocks!

WOW!

They worked so well together and had a lot of fun seeing how much 100 really is.  We learned that we can't buy a car with $100, but we might be able to buy some groceries with $100 or a nice outfit or a new pair of Nike tennis shoes.  We learned that $100 would be nice to have, but in reality, we can't buy that much with it either!

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I wanted to share a couple pictures from our PBIS dance party!  They all participated in it and saved their money!  I hope they enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed watching them dance! 

They had a great time! 
I can't wait to see what is in store for the next nine weeks!

I love my sweet class!!!

Messy Matter

We are finishing up learning about Matter and all its properties this week.  We had fun with experiments and learning about solids, liquids and gases.  Yesterday, we played with a type of matter that was both a solid and a liquid.  We started with water and then passed around some corn starch.  We felt the corn starch and saw that it was very smooth, but still a solid.  The particles were very small, so when we poured it in the cup, it took the shape of the container.  But when we mixed both water and the corn starch together a funny thing happened.  We predicted it would be like a cake mix batter, which is what it looked like... until we felt it!

What a surprise we had when we went to touch it!  When we pressed on the matter, it became hard, but when we let it go, it ran through our fingers... just like water.  Was it a liquid or a solid???

Look... it is hard...

No.. it is wet!!!

What a great way to learn about a matter that doesn't really fall into a solid or liquid category. 

It is called "OOBLECK."

Oobleck is a non-newtonian fluid. That is, it acts like a liquid when being poured, but like a solid when a force is acting on it. You can grab it and then it will ooze out of your hands. If you make enough Oobleck, you can even walk on it!

To make it was very easy!  We had one and a half cups of corn starch and one cup of water and mixed them together to experiment the fun!



Half Way Through!

Can you believe it?  The New Year is here and we are half way through this school year already!  I cannot believe it.  We have already done so much this first week back! 

I want to brag about how awesome my class is... They all worked so hard the last nine weeks for 2 things... The first thing was AR.  I had all 22 students not only meet their goal, but mostly all of them EXCEEDED their AR goal.  I am so proud of them and their hard work on their reading and comprehension.  I want them to have a love of reading and not to do it just because they have to do it to reach their goal.  The thing I love about AR is the fact that they really learn how to comprehend what they are reading.  Along the way, I see that most of these students really WANT to read, not just because they have to.  They develop that love for reading that I am talking about. 

We are reading a chapter book now in class called, Cupid Doesn't Flip Hamburgers.  They are really loving The Bailey School Kids adventures.  I love to change my voice and hear them laugh and really love all the different characters in the book.  I love it when they go back to their seat and try to read their book while changing their voices.  That shows they are really getting into a book!  I LOVE it! 

Here is a picture of my awesome and talented 2nd graders! 

They all made their goal and they should be so proud of themselves!

My top 2 Readers were Noel and Nicholas. 

They both had over 200%! 

Way to go!!!

The second thing I am so proud of these great kids is for their behavior.  They all SAVED their Bronco Bucks for our Dance and Wii Party tomorrow!  They needed to save $50.00 for the party, but because of their positive behavior, they all had over $50.00 to participate in the party.  I will post pictures tomorrow.  In class I am trying to teach/instill the difference between needs and wants.  I know we all want a new toy off the Braggin Wagon, but maybe some of us might really need a new pencil.  They are also learning how to save with our Bank.  I open the bank once a week so they can deposit or withdrawal money to spend on the Braggin Wagon.  What a great way to learn about saving and spending!  Tomorrow, we will all be enjoying ourselves because they all saved their money to participate in this fun event!  I can't wait!



What's the Matter?

Science is one of my most favorite things to teach my second graders.  We are learning all about Matter and its properties.  They are really enjoying the different learning experiments we are doing.  I am looking forward to making a fun slime that is both liquid and solid after the holidays.  We have learned that everything we see and feel is made of matter. 

The states of matter are solid, liquid, gas, and plasma (which we don't really learn about yet, but we know it exsists!) 

For matter, we do a fun project that is sent home and they need to find 5 pictures or create their own of each state of matter.  Then we  share our projects.  They enjoy sharing what they've found or created on their own.

For the experiment in class, we used magazines to find pictures and then decided if they were a liquid, solid or gas.  Before we started, we decided to list some of the properties of each state of matter. 

Look at the pictures to see what we found out through becoming a scientist and learning about Matter!

We discovered that the liquids and solids were EVERYWHERE... but we couldn't find a lot of pictures that had gases in them.  They decided that gas was clear, but it is everywhere, even though we cannot see it. 

They did a great job of working together to do a wonderful job on this activity!

 

December Already???

Well, so much has happened in a month!  We were out the whole week of Thanksgiving which is always so nice, but it has been a blur since!  My family and I spent the week in Disney World, which is always fun, but exhausting as well.  I have been playing catch up since we've been home.  I am sorry for the delay!  I am hoping that after the holidays, things will slow down and we will get back on track!  Until then, these are the things we have been learning in class!!!

I know you have been wondering why you had to send in all the black picture frames, but I am so proud of these, that I have to show them off!  Our school has a HUGE art show that would make most museums look bad!  The teachers here are all so amazing and talented, and we are all just over achievers, so it has to be the best!

The theme we have this year is multicultural art.  So I decided to do something with my camera, since I love taking pictures.  We learned all about different settings and how to set a backdrop and how to focus the camera.  So, to throw in the multicultural, I thought I would do fruit from around the world.  The kids LOVED it and they did a great job!  We first did them in black and white, but decided to do them again in color and I am so glad I did.  I hope you can come to the Art Show Thursday night and see all the great works of art!  Here is a sneak peak because I have the best mom in the world who came up here with me Sunday night to put up all the pictures with me.  That was no easy task!  So we stayed up here until around 10pm on my birthday night to get them up, but I LOVE THEM!!!!  Thank you mom!  You didn't know what you were getting into when I asked you to come, but you did a great job!  If you don't know by now, if you ask to help, I will put you to work!  :)

 I don't want to take them down!  I know, I know... they are yours and yes, they will be going home later in the year.

Aren't they beautiful?  Just wait to see them close up!

We talked about PRONOUNS and how they take the place of a noun.  I found a great teacher site that had the perfect activity to go along with pronouns, so I have to give credit to Mrs. Lemons over at Step Into Second Grade!  Thank you for the great activity!  The kids loved it and a special thanks to Savannah's mom for helping put up the tree!  I wouldn't have gotten it up without you.

In math we are working on double digit subtraction with regrouping.  For homework tonight, I gave a review sheet for them to do.  Keep working on this!  They will get it! 

But... looking through my pictures, I found a cute even and odd activity we did earlier in the year.  We made a town outside our room and we had to put the house numbers in order and put all the even houses on one side and the odd houses on the other side, just like our own homes.  They had to use base ten blocks to show their number and make a house of it.  They are so crafty and really got into it!  I thought I would share your child's work!  They are some smart cookies!

I hope you are having a wonderful week and I am sorry that I haven't been keeping up with this like I promised!  I promise I will do better!

 I still can't believe it is December!