The story of Moses

This week our second graders have been learning about the story of Moses and how God used Moses to rescue His people, the Israelites, from slavery in Egypt. In order to better understand the story of Moses, of course we had to sing some songs! The first song we learned is called "Moses, Moses" and it details all of the things that Moses went through in order to rescue his people from slavery.

The second song is called "The Plague Song" and it allowed our second graders to remember the many plagues God sent to Egypt in order to convince Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.

Michigan State Flag

This past week we were beginning to finish up chapter one in our Social Studies book. To test our second and third graders and see what they had learned about Michigan, students were arranged in pairs and were given the task of creating a new Michigan state flag.

Students already know what our state flag currently looks like and they were given artistic license to create a new flag which would properly represent our state. The only directive the students were given was to make sure that everything they drew on their flag needed to somehow represent Michigan (so no hearts or random drawings were seen on their flags). :)

Once partner pairs finished their flags, each pair stood in front of the class and presented their flag, listing the things drawn on their Michigan flags and explaining why they drew the different objects on their flags. I was extremely impressed with how students demonstrated the things that they learned about Michigan throughout this activity!

Apple Senses

This past week has been an exciting week in our class! For writing this week, we decided to use our five senses so that we could describe what an apple tastes, smells, feels, sounds, and looks like.

To start off this writing activity, our second graders were each given green and red apple slices at their seats so that they could properly use their five senses in order to study these apples. As a class, we discussed our five senses with these apples. We tasted, smelled, listened to, felt, and examined these apple slices together and discussed our findings. Then, students were on their own as they wrote and described their apples using their five senses.

After finishing this writing activity, students glued on green, yellow, or red apple parts to their paper to make their writing look like an apple. These cute apples are hanging in our hallway window. Feel free to stop by and check them out!

Isaac Blesses His Sons

Today during our Bible time we decided to act out our Bible story so that we could visualize and understand what happened even better than if we had just read it. Thanks to my very talented second graders, who may be aspiring actors and actresses, this story really came to life in our classroom. Here is a video of our Bible story. Enjoy!

Welcome New Second Graders!

Welcome second graders! This week I feel like I have gotten to know you a little better already and I am so excited to watch as you learn and grow throughout this school year. To give you parents an idea of what we have been doing in the classroom this week, here are a few things we have done!

To get to know my new students as well as for them to get to know their new teacher, we put together a "Guess Who!" game. This is just like the game "Guess Who" but in paper form. Students each wrote ten things about them that would help others guess which second grader is writing these things. Once students wrote these ten things, they glued it, as well as a picture of themselves, on a colorful piece of paper and these "Guess Who!" papers are now hanging outside of our classroom. Feel free to stop by and see if you can guess which facts are describing your child!

Something else we did during our first week of school was create "First Day of School Selfies" and "All About Me" posters. These posters included more facts about our second graders including things like their favorite color, favorite food, and their birth date. These posters along with their selfies can be found on a bulletin board in our classroom. Feel free to come and check them out!

Lastly, we began a science unit with our second and third graders about plants during our first week of school. In order to learn more about plants and how they grow and create seeds, we observed the seeds in two different types of fruit: tomatoes and apples. Students looked at each of these fruits and discovered that there are ways in which these fruits are different and ways in which they are similar. They observed the dozens of seeds found in a tomato and only a few larger seeds in an apple. Students loved this hands-on experiment in our classroom!

Keep checking our blog for more updates on the things we are learning each week!