Classroom Store

We had lots of fun before Thanksgiving break practicing our money skills by buying "groceries" from our classroom store. The kids took turns being cashiers and buyers and got lots of practice with counting coins.

Jack's mom read Yertle the Turtle as our latest Mystery Reader!

Joel's mom surprised him when she was a Mystery Reader for his birthday!

Hat Day!

As you may have read in Mrs. Frentzel's Weekly Update on Friday, Jefferson was able to raise $1,100 on our hat day to send at least three local World War II Veterans on the spring Honor Flight! Our class alone raised $53.50! Wow! Thanks for your generosity! Here's a cute picture of the kiddos in their hats!

Halloween Party!

A special thank you to our room moms and all of the parents who volunteered their time or sent in treats for our Halloween party last Friday! The kids had lots of fun! Check out some pictures of our great costumes!

Our Week

Claire's mom was our Mystery Reader on Friday. She read a cute book called Why Epossumondas Has No Hair on His Tail.

Omar during his Star Student week.

 

Nataley during her Star Student week.

Last week we got to have our October meeting with our Fourth Grade Buddies. We had lots of fun doing candy corn math together!

Peaches and Catapults!

We had another fun week in second grade! We finished our reading of James and the Giant Peach, one of my all-time favorite books! It has so many rich words and lots of adventure, which make it the perfect beginning of the year read aloud to capture the interest of second graders. To celebrate finishing the book, the students wrote their opinions of James and the Giant Peach, and got to have a peach slice while they worked.

 

We also continued our science/writing unit on forces and motion. The students worked in small groups to design and build catapults using basic materials, including a spoon, rubber band, wood, and tape. Then they used ping pong balls and cotton balls to determine which would travel farthest. This was our third and final experiment and lab report, so the students were definitely more comfortable writing like scientists. They included a hypothesis, materials/procedure, experiment data, and results/conclusion in their lab reports. The kids were very excited to show off their catapults! You have some very creative children!

 

 

We also had our first Mystery Reader visit the classroom on Friday! We have just begun our study of the mystery genre, so the kids were excited to listen to the clues that our Mystery Reader gave.

Kaiden's mom, Mrs. Deck, was our first Mystery Reader of the year!

Here's a picture of Sarah during her week as our Star Student!

Writing Celebration!

The students had such a fun time on Friday celebrating the conclusion of our narrative writing unit! We have spent the last six weeks learning what good narrative writing sounds like and creating our own stories. Our mini-lessons focused on a variety of things, from crafting powerful beginnings and endings, to "unfreezing" our characters through the use of dialogue and movement. One of the mini-lessons that we kept coming back to throughout the unit was the idea of writing a "seed story." We talked about how many second graders want to write a "watermelon story" where they tell you everything they did in the course of a day, but that writers should try to pick out one little seed from the watermelon that they can write about. It may sound silly, but comparing our writing to a watermelon really helped these young writers pull out one small moment that they wanted to write about. So, to celebrate, we shared our best personal narrative with our classmates and had a watermelon snack!

Celia and Sarah enjoying their watermelon treat.

Abdi eating up his piece of watermelon.

Sincere sharing his favorite personal narrative with the class.

Our Star Student from two weeks ago, Jayden!

Our Star Student from last week, Adeline!

Busy Friday!

   Our Friday was jam-packed with activities! The highlight of our day was Jog for Jefferson! The kids did an amazing job of raising donations and running laps!



Mrs. Hofmann's Cheetahs!

Ready to run!

Here comes Joel!

   The students also had the opportunity to meet with their fourth grade buddies from Mrs. Palmer's class, which was lots of fun! They interviewed each other and wrote down some interesting facts about their buddies. We will be meeting once per month throughout the year. This is a great way for the fourth graders to practice their leadership skills, and it allows the second graders to have an older Jefferson friend that they can look up to. Here are some pictures of your children with their new buddies! (Please note that a few fourth graders are not allowed to have their pictures taken and posted online, so if you don't see your child, it means that I wasn't able to take their picture with their buddy).

   We ended our day by having our "Quints Baby Shower." The kids shared what "qu" item they brought for the quints and then we had a sweet treat. Hopefully, the quints will help the class remember that "q" and "u" always go together!

Our adorable quints!

Oni enjoying her cake and lemonade at our Quints Baby Shower.