Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Easter Egg Drop

To have fun with science for Easter, our second graders participated in an egg drop experiment. For this egg drop experiment, students were told that they would be given a partner to work with and they would have to plan out together how they would save their Easter egg from total annihilation when I threw it up in the air and let it land on the hard floor. In order to save their Easter egg, students would be given two paper towels, one small strip of bubble wrap, one small strip of foam, five rubber bands, and one toilet paper roll. They were told that they would first need to plan out how they would save their egg, bring up their plan to me, and once I approved their plan, they could then begin to create their "armor" for their poor egg friend.





























Once the plans were approved, students enjoyed decorating and naming their egg (apparently Bob is a common name for eggs...) before they began to build the protective barrier around the egg.























Students finished up protecting their eggs and then it was time to test their egg armor. All of the eggs were thrown up to the ceiling in the C2C room and then they all dropped to the hard cement floor. Once the eggs all dropped, students uncovered the egg to discover whether or not their poor egg friend made the fall. In the end, we discovered that three out of eight eggs survived the fall!


























Together we discussed what made these three eggs survive the fall rather than the other five eggs and what kind of egg armor is best for our poor little egg friends. Our second graders enjoyed this "egg-speriment" throughout this Easter science activity!







Thursday, April 11, 2019

Miss Beery's Car Factory

This week our second graders have been learning a bit more about economics in social studies. To understand a key concept in economics, "specialization", a little better we participated in an activity where my classroom was turned into "Miss Beery's Car Factory". I was the boss at this car factory (a very mean boss who didn't pay her workers...) and the students were organized into three groups to be my factory workers. Two of these factory worker groups "specialized" by having a job for each of the workers. For example, one worker cut out the car body, another colored the tires, another glued on the tires, etc. These "specialization" groups had a type of assembly line going on, while the other group of factory workers didn't have any "specialization". So, this group of workers had to do all of the jobs by themselves rather than work together and form the "interdependent relationship" we've been studying. Students were given these instructions and they were told they had 20 minutes to make as many cars as they could...BUT, the boss had to approve their cars in order to be counted. If the cars were not perfect, the boss would throw out their cars and they wouldn't be counted for their team (I'm a VERY mean boss...). The three groups were told that the group with the most cars made once the 20 minutes were up would be the winner!






























After the 20 minutes ended, the results were on the board. It was obvious who the winners of this activity were. The groups that "specialized" had many more cars made than the group that didn't "specialize". We talked about how much easier it was for the groups who had their own specific jobs and formed the "interdependent relationship" to create the cars than the other group. Students loved participating and working in "Miss Beery's Car Factory" throughout this activity and they now have a better understanding of these important social studies concepts!

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Spelling Bee

In case you missed attending the spelling bee before spring break, here are some pictures from that special day. Six of our second graders participated in the spelling bee: Libby Paveglio, William Conrad, Abigail Smith, Lucas Nichols, Daniel Sowatsky, and Adam Birchmeier. All of our second graders did an excellent job in this spelling bee!






Math Game

This past week we had a few visitors stop by in second grade. These visitors were two of my aunts, Aunt Becky and Aunt Ann, and my sister-in-law, Jess. When these visitors stopped by our classroom they said that they wanted to play a game with us. To play this game we stayed in our three groups in the classroom and each group was given one dye, a pencil, and each student in the group was given a lined piece of paper. Each student was given the task of writing from 1 to 100 on their piece of paper, if they were the first student in their group to reach 100, they would win the game in their group. However, in order to write on their paper, they had to get the pencil in their group. To get the pencil, they passed around a dye and if they rolled a 6 they would grab the pencil and write as fast as they possibly could. They would keep writing until another student in their group rolled a 6, then that next student would grab the pencil and write as fast as they possibly could. As you can imagine, this was a very fast moving game!





























The second graders LOVED learning how to play this new game. I want to say a huge thanks to our visitors for stopping by and having fun with us!