Summer Adventures 2013

Tomorrow is the first day of school!  I am so excited to meet my new students and begin our learning journey together.  Before school started I sent each of them a letter asking for a picture or two of something they did over the summer so I could put together a video that would inspire us as writers.  I can't wait to share this with them and hear all of their wonderful stories.  Happy First Day of School!

Summer Adventures 2013

Science Party

Yesterday we had a Space Party and did lots of fun Space activities.  We all got in a spacesuit that our teacher made out of a cardboard box.  We thought it was exciting!  There were five other stations too.  Our favorite station was making Atomic Slime Goo that glows in the dark!  We made the slime glow by using a black light.  We lit up too!  One of our other favorite stations was making Moon Sand and playing with it.  We made moon sand castles and it was very, very fun and interesting.  We hope you enjoy our video!

What We Are Reading!

Today our retiring Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Van Nice, came to our classroom to read us 2 of the 5 Children's Choice Award Nominees for this year.  All we have to say is that it is going to be HARD to vote for just one!  Mo Willems made the list again with his sweet book, The Duckling Gets a Cookie.

We have a soft spot for Mo Willems and will be adding this book to our collection for sure!  The second book Mrs. Van Nice read to us was Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by James Dean.  LOVED!!!!!!!!!

If you click here you can visit the Harper Collins website and enjoy listening to the author read the book to you.  You will not be disappointed! We promise.  We can hardly wait for tomorrow.  We will be reading Nighttime Ninja by Barbara Decosta. Click here to read all about the Children's Choice Book Awards.

Impact Crater Discovery

Today in science we were exploring the idea of impact craters.  We were trying to figure out how velocity (speed), angle of impact and size & shape of an impactor (meteorite, asteroid) effected the size and shape of an impact crater.

Jakob, Justin, Jaden and David discovered that not all impactors created the same size crater. The large, not solid, baseball they used created a shallow crater. They thought that if the baseball was solid it would probably make a deeper crater.

Tanner, Taylor, Greyson and Terrell noticed that the faster the impactor was thrown the more central uplift they got. In addition to this they discovered that not all central uplifts were big. They also noticed that when you throw small impactors fast (high velocity) you get big craters.

Collin, Kami, Lydia and Falisha figured out that if you throw a small impactor slow (without much velocity) you get a small crater and if you throw the same impactor faster (increase the velocity) you get a bigger crater.  

Tomorrow we will continue our research and analyze our data.

Our Busy Life!

This week in second grade we have been incredibly busy!

We have been studying about planets this week. We are researching to get a lot of information to share with our classmates

During math we have been studying the area of shapes.  We used different units of measure. One unit of measure was a green pattern block triangle.  The next day our unit of measure changed and was 1 square unit.

At Word Study time we played a game called Vocabulary Rock and Roll.  We had to draw a word card and roll the die to find out what we had to do with the word.  Sometimes we had to draw what the word meant. Sometimes we acted out the word. Acting out the word was one of our favorite jobs.

We have been doing opinion writing. We're learning how to convince people to agree with us. Writing a worthwhile introduction that grabs the readers attention helps. Another important thing to do is support your reasons with evidence. 

This month we have been reading The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. Yesterday we drew pictures to make protest signs. We finished the book today. If you haven't read this book we highly recommend that you do!

Geometry and Space!

This week we have begun studying Geometry and Space! We wrote letters to martians explaining what a triangle is. We learned about the Solar System and galaxies using the Kids Discover Galaxies App and studied oi/oy words, taking pictures and writing complete sentences defining some of those words. We also worked hard to try and recreate the rocket our teacher made using one square of paper cut into four pieces. It was tricky!

Weather Watchers

For the past week we have been watching the weather around the world. Each group chose a city on one of 6 continents; North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. We checked the weather each day using the Weather+ App on our iPads and recorded the high and low temperatures as well as the weather conditions. At the end of the week we used the data we collected about our cities to make line graphs.