Thanksgiving Fun!

We had such a fun time before Thanksgiving break traveling back to the year 1620 to find out what life was like for the Pilgrims on board the Mayflower and once they arrived in America. The students spent the morning traveling to each of the second grade classrooms. Each room had a particular theme. For instance, one classroom focused on the games Pilgrim children played, while another was all about the foods that Pilgrims ate. Of course, I had to get a picture of the kiddos in their adorable hats!

Our Class Store

The students had a great time on Friday practicing their money skills with our class store! Half of the students were cashiers and the other half were shoppers. The shoppers got to "buy" items from our class store and then go to one of the cashiers to purchase the item. The cashier had to make sure they counted out the correct change. The kids then got to switch roles.

Monster Exchange

The kids were very excited about Halloween last week, so we decided to incorporate some Halloween fun into our Writer's Workshop lessons with our "Monster Exchange." The students all drew a monster of their choice. Then we discussed how good writers add lots of description to their writing to help the reader create a "mental image" of what is happening. The students wrote a descriptive paragraph of their monsters, trying to describe in great detail how their monster looked. On Halloween, I played some of my favorite 80s music (think Ghostbusters and Thriller) and the kids exchanged paragraphs with a partner and tried to draw their partner's monster, without looking, based on the descriptive paragraph. The kids had a great time and a better understanding that it's so important to include lots of description in their writing.