Happy Thanksgiving!

It has been a wonderful week in 2nd grade! Everyone made it through the one FULL week of school in November! Remember that, next week, we will only have school on Monday and Tuesday.

In math, we continue our unit on place value. Students have done an excellent job working with larger numbers! We continue to practice representing numbers with boxes, sticks, and circles. We have practiced some more challenging story problems, as well as several activites on estimation! We are beginning to incorporate some short time practice activities into our daily routine. Please continue to discuss minutes before and after the hour at home.

It has been fun getting into our Social Studies books this week! As a morning activity, students are doing daily geography practice. In the afternoon, we have been studying Native Americans, Spanish explorers coming to America, and pilgrims. As a writing project this week, we talked about writing from another point of view. Students were asked to write a journal from the point of view of a pilgrim on the Mayflower. It has been wonderful seeing many great and creative ideas in this project!

There will be no reading groups next week, as we will be taking our language block to do different Thanksgiving and reading activities. On Monday, we will begin our "Deck the Halls with 2nd Graders" project. Be sure to visit the pod in December to see the 2nd grade display! On Tuesday, we will make our pumpkin pie in a bag! Thank you SO much to all of you who have sent/are sending ingredients on Monday. This is always a favorite project for our class, and a great chance to have our own class Thanksgiving celebration!

As part of our "Deck the Halls with 2nd Graders" project, we will need hair-colored yarn. I have some yellow, red, black, and brown yarn, but could always use more of these...especially brown and yellow. If you are someone who has spare yarn in your house that could be used and would like to donate some, please e-mail me over the weekend and let me know what colors you are sending. I will plan on doing some yarn-shopping on Sunday or Monday for the colors that we are still low on.

I hope you all have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving with your family. It was great seeing all of you at conferences last week, and I am truly thankful to have the opportunity to work with your terrific kids this year!

Ingredients Needed!

We will be making pumpkin pie in a bag in our classroom on Monday, November 22. In order to do this fun project, there are some ingredients that we will need. If you would be willing to send in one or more of the following ingredients, please add a comment to this blog post so that everyone can see what is being sent and we can be sure to cover all of the ingredients.
Thanks so much! Please let me know if you have any questions.

* 2 boxes of graham cracker squares
* 1 cup of sugar
* 1 small tub of soft butter (there should be extra...I will send it home)
* 5 small boxes of instant vanilla pudding
* 6 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice
* 1 gallon of milk (there should be extra...I will send it home)
* 3 cans of pumpkin

All about the body!

Good afternoon!

I look forward to seeing all of you next week at conferences! Please remember that there will be no school this Friday (teacher recording/reporting day) or next Thursday and Friday due to conferences. I am still missing conference forms from a few of you...please return these as soon as possible to confirm your conference spot. I can't wait to share with you the great things your 2nd graders have been doing in class!

This week, we are wrapping up our study of the human body. We took some time this afternoon to review, and will continue to do so tomorrow. The assessment over this unit will be this Thursday. Tomorrow, students will be bringing home a body system memory game to play. Here are some things you should discuss as you play this game and prepare for the assessment:
* What are some ways to take care of your nervous system, digestive system, and skeletal systems? (for example...wear a helmet while biking to protect your brain, eat healthy foods to promote proper digestion, exercise to keep bones healthy and strong)
* Tell about some of the basic bones of the body (for example...your skull protects your brain, your backbone can also be called your spine and is actually made of many vertebrae.)
* Why are your muscles and bones important? (your bones stand you up and give you shape and your muscles pull on bones to help you move).
* What does your brain do? (helps you remember, think, problem solve, have feelings, etc.)
* What does your respiratory system do? (helps you breathe...oxygen moves into your lungs when you breathe in, and then you breathe out carbon dioxide).
* How does your digestive system work?
* How does your circulatory system work? Why is your heart so important? (it pumps blood all over your body.)

Next week, we will take a couple of days to talk about healthy food choices and the food pyramid. The following week, we will begin a long social studies unit on "Our Past". During this unit, we will compare Native American tribes, learn about the pioneers during a book discussion about "The Josephina Story Quilt", discuss Christopher Columbus, and talk a little bit about the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. As you can see, we will be fitting a lot of information into the month of November!

We are wrapping up our math unit on time. Students will take their time assessment tomorrow, so tonight would be a good time to review telling time, elapsed time, etc. Take a look at the class activity pages from the past week for ideas! On Thursday we will begin our next unit, which is on place value and addition to 200.

In writing, students are currently working on descriptive paragraph writing and the use of the writing process. I look forward to sharing writing portfolios, as well as information on reading levels, at conferences.

Thanks, as always, for all that you do!