December Mystery Readers

Cole's mom visited us on December 5 and read A Very Marley Christmas.

Juan's dad visited us on December 12 and read Green Eggs and Ham.

Lily's mom also visited us on December 12 and read Christmas Cookies and The Animals' Santa.

   

Happy December 5th birthday, Taylor!

Happy November 30th birthday, Brandt!

Class Store and Fossils

Before Thanksgiving break, we had lots of fun with our science unit on fossils. The kids learned how difficult it is for paleontologists to excavate fossils from rock with our cookie experiment. Each child was given one chocolate chip cookie along with two tools (a toothpick and a Q-tip). They had to excavate as many chocolate chips (fossils) as they could without destroying them. Once we were done, our kid paleontologists enjoyed eating their "fossils."

To continue practicing counting money, I set up a class grocery store for the students where they could "buy" various food items. The kids took turns being cashiers and buyers and making sure that they were counting money accurately. They really enjoyed this!

Mystery Reader!

Andrew's grandma was our Mystery Reader last Friday! She even brought mustaches for all the kids to wear while she read the book, Mustache Baby.

Happy Halloween!

Thanks to all of the wonderful moms and dads who made our Halloween Party so much fun!

Expert Fair

     To celebrate the end of our informational writing unit, we had an "Expert Fair" last Friday with the other second grade classes. Each child chose one nonfiction book that they had written, and then shared that book with a fellow second grader. They even got to wear a little sign indicating what they were an expert on. We finished the Expert Fair by sharing with our own classmates.

Elijah was a soccer expert and Trent was a baseball expert.

Julian was a race car expert and Andrew was a Ninja Turtles expert.

Addi and Abby were both dog experts.

     We also played some fun games in math last week to help us practice various math concepts. Two favorites were "Beat the Calculator" and "Place Value Feud." In Beat the Calculator, the students were surprised to find that even though a calculator is a useful tool, our brains our often times much quicker at solving addition problems with several addends. During the game, a child would pull a card, such as 6+4+8+2, and then one child would solve the problem mentally while the other child used the calculator. Nearly every time, the child doing mental math was quicker. In Place Value Feud, the kids were able to see that the value of a number changes depending on its place in a number.

Trent and Evan playing Beat the Calculator.

Brandt and Grant playing Place Value Feud.

Taylor and Deanna playing Place Value Feud.

We welcomed Addi's dad, Mr. Suriano, as our Mystery Reader last Friday!

Fun Friday!

Friday afternoon proved to be lots of fun for our class! We earned an extra recess for tying with Mrs. George's class for the most PTO memberships in the entire school! Then we got to have an ice cream party for raising the most money for Jog for Jefferson in the second grade! Thank you parents for all of your support! Both of these extra rewards were because of you!

We celebrated Grant's 8th birthday on October 16! Happy Birthday, Grant!

Our First Mystery Reader!

The kids were very excited when our very first Mystery Reader, Lily's Nana, came to our classroom last Friday! She gave us five clues about herself and the kids used those clues to try and guess if it was someone they knew. Lily's Nana read us Mr. Belinsky's Bagels and even brought in mini bagels for the kids to enjoy! 

Lily's Nana was our first Mystery Reader!

Cole was our Star Student last week! We enjoyed getting to learn more about him!

$2,487!?! Amazing!!!

Our class raised an amazing $2,487 for the Jog for Jefferson!!! We had the highest total of all the second grade classes, earning us an ice cream party, and the second highest total in the entire school! Thank you so much to all of you who donated to help our school! Needless to say, the kids were beyond excited on Friday! We also had six kids in our class win individual prices!

Lots of smiles after our Jog for Jefferson Assembly!

 

 

 

We got to learn lots about Sophia during her week as our Star Student!

Olivia was our Star Student last week!

Happy October 1st birthday to Sophia!

Jog for Jefferson

We had such a fun time last Friday during our annual Jog for Jefferson fundraiser! Mrs. Hofmann's "Shooting Stars" ran a ton of laps! Thanks to our amazing PTO for all of the time and effort that goes into organizing the Jog and to all of our wonderful parent volunteers who helped throughout the day!  

The kids were very excited to have their picture taken with Krash, the Columbus Clippers mascot!

Quints Baby Shower

We spent last week reviewing that "q" and "u" always go together in a word. To help us remember this spelling rule, we had help from our "Quint Babies." They visited the classroom earlier in the week and then we had a Quints Baby Shower on Friday. Each child brought in a "qu" gift for the quints and we had a sweet treat to celebrate. Hopefully, this will help the kiddos remember to put "q" and "u" together the next time they write a word starting with the letter q!

Lily and Mazzy having fun at our Quints Baby Shower!

This week's Star Student was Addison!

Happy Birthday Deanna! We celebrated her Sept. 13 birthday on Friday.

Number Scramble

We finished our study of odd and even numbers and began working on sequencing and comparing numbers last week. One of the kids' favorite activities that we did was called, "Number Scramble." Each child was given a two-digit number and when I said, "Go!" they had to unscramble the numbers by putting them in order from least to greatest. We'll do another "Number Scramble" this upcoming week with three-digit numbers.

 

 

Here are the kids holding up their unscrambled numbers.

Another Wonderful Week!

We had another fantastic week in second grade! The students are settling into our daily routine and we've been able to establish some of our weekly activities, such as Star Student and our estimation jar.

 

Grant was our very first Star Student! We had a great time getting to know him better when he shared his Star Student bulletin board.

In Writer's Workshop, we've spent the past few weeks learning how to tell a small moment or "seed story." We talked about how writers sometimes want to tell every single detail, like a great big watermelon, instead of pulling out one tiny seed (small moment)  from the watermelon. It sounds a little silly, but it definitely helps the students remember the concept. We even had tiny slices of watermelon to help us remember the idea. Here are Abby and Da'Von enjoying their watermelon!

Evan is enjoying his piece of watermelon!

Each week in math we have our estimation jar. One student takes the jar home and fills it with items. The student whose estimate is closest to the actual number gets to take the jar home next. Addison filled the estimation jar with paper clips, and Elijah had the closest estimate.

Welcome to Our Classroom Blog!

Hi Families,
Welcome to our classroom blog! This is just another wonderful way for you to stay connected to what's happening in our second grade classroom! Each week I post a few pictures of your terrific kiddos engaged in learning to give you a peek inside our classroom. Thanks for stopping by!

Sophia and Riley enjoyed some "Jitter Juice" to make those first day of school jitters go away!

Andrew and Elijah are showing off the zipper-pulls we made for our backpacks to get to know each other better.

Steffi and Addison are making an "appointment" with each other with our Partner Clocks. When we need partners, I call out a time and tell the students to get with the person whose name is written on their Partner Clock for that time. It's a great way to get the kids working with other friends!

Grant and Clara are signing up to be partners using our Partner Clock.

Our first math unit has been focused on identifying even and odd numbers. We played a fun game called "Even and Odd Scoot" where the students "scooted" to different desks and determined whether the number taped onto the desk was even or odd. Elijah and Jacob are working hard!

Olivia is showing off her bucket. We learned that everyone has an invisible bucket inside of them and that we can choose to be either "bucket-fillers" or "bucket-dippers." The students are able to fill each other's buckets by writing down compliments to each other and placing them inside our miniature buckets. They had a great time Friday afternoon looking inside their buckets!

Here's Taylor checking out his bucket.

World Traveling!

The kids have so enjoyed our recent "travels" around the world! To make our study of map skills, landforms, and different cultures more interesting, we've had several parents from each of the second grade classes volunteer to share their world travels with us. The kids have their own passports that they add countries to as we "visit" them. It's been a lot of fun, and we look forward to continuing to travel this week, too! Here are the parents from our class that have visited.

Jayden's grandma took us to South Africa!

Sarah's friend from church, Miss Cindy, took us to China!

Joel's mom took us to Switzerland!



Jack's mom took us to Thailand!

We've also had Mystery Readers continue to visit our classroom, much to the kids' delight!



Oni's mom read Dino Pets Go to School.

Jack's dad read Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum and Inside Your Outside.