Special Friend Day

The week before Thanksgiving was a short and fun week! On Tuesday we had our special friends come and visit us in the morning. They came to chapel with us, made a fun Thanksgiving turkey craft with us, and then ate some yummy donuts and juice with us. We loved having these special friends come and visit us in our classroom! Here are some pictures with our special friends:

After our special friends left for the day, we did an exciting math activity where second graders had to purchase items for their Thanksgiving meal without going over their $25 budget. Students enjoyed "shopping" around and deciding which items they could afford for their Thanksgiving meal. Here are a few pictures of students shopping for their Thanksgiving meal:

At the end of the day, our second graders were surprised with the opportunity to get together with their sixth grade chapel buddies to do some activities with them. In the sixth grade room, students read together, while in the second grade classroom they had a "Mayflower Challenge" where students were given a few items to create a Mayflower boat that would hold up and not sink when pennies were placed in the boat. Students enjoyed reading and working with their chapel buddies throughout these activities. Here are a few pictures of students working with their chapel buddies:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Coming Soon...

For the past few weeks our second graders have been busy writing our classroom book entitled "Our Christmas Traditions". Today, we will finalize our book and mail it into the book company so that they can create official copies of our book. Students are very excited to see their writing in an actual book! For the past three years I have had my students write a classroom book and each year my students get excited about becoming authors and illustrators. Below is a sneak peak at the cover of our book as well as previous books created by my students. We can't wait to share our writing inside of our new book with all of our families this Christmas!

Changing Matter

This week our second graders have started a new unit in science where they get to learn how matter can change. In order to begin this unit, students were given the opportunity to experiment with a few different objects as they worked together to change matter. Given toothpicks, toilet paper rolls, paper, glue, tape, scissors, pipe cleaners, straws, popsicle sticks, and coffee filters, students created something new. The only thing that students were told were that they needed to utilize all of the materials that were given to them in order to create a new structure.

It was interesting to notice that each group of students created a totally different structure throughout this activity. Students enjoyed working together in order to create this new structure as they changed matter around to make something new. Good job second graders!

Solid Buildings

For the past few weeks our second graders have been learning about different states of matter. To work on one specific state of matter, solids, the students had the opportunity to think of what solids are appropriate for building certain objects. In order for students to really think this through, they were given the opportunity to build three different items (such as a house, bike, car, etc.) with numerous building tools spread across the classroom (magnets, counting cubes, shape tiles, lincoln logs, etc.). Students worked in pairs to build their three objects:

After building their objects, students thought through a few different questions. How did you choose the materials for your design solution? What was the purpose of different blocks? Students thought through these questions and discovered that different blocks (different solids) are better at designing certain objects than others. For example, students would rather build a house out of the lincoln logs than with the counting cubes because it built a sturdier house. Through this activity, students realized that the properties of different solids truly make a difference when they think through objects that they would make out of those solids.