Has your child mentioned our new science unit? It’s all about matter!
This week we’ve been exploring properties of solids. Your child has been busy collecting data and writing about his/her findings. Ask about his/her science notebook! On Thursday your child worked as an engineer to design a tower. Your child discovered that flat, rigid solids worked well for the base of the tower. Find out about the other properties of the solids your child used to build his/her tower.
We’re fortunate to have many volunteers in our classroom!
Each week, the children work 1-on-1 with at least 2 volunteers on a variety of reading, spelling, math,
and science activities. These experiences enable the children to practice important skills, and also to explain
and improve their strategies for a wide assortment of tasks. Ask your child to describe some activities he/she
has recently completed with a volunteer.
Sequencing has been a hot topic in our classroom over the past couple of days.
Ask your child about the journal writing he/she did that included at least 4 sequence words. (On Thursday, your child wrote about that day’s recess activities. Friday’s writing focused on explaining how to do something.)
Also ask about some of the online sequencing activities your child did. These included several activities on the BrainPOP Jr. site, a PBS game called “Story Scramble,” and a bunch of challenges at the following site: www.quia.com/pages/sequencingfun.html . Perhaps your child would like to demonstrate his/her sequencing skills for you!
The children have explored coordinate grids this week.
They learned to find points by going across first…and then going up or down. If they forget this, they can use alphabetical order: across comes first!
Here’s a great link for 3 levels of practice: Funbrain.com – What’s the Point?
Enjoy!
* Each child in our class picked a country to research for a culture project. Your child is making a booklet about one culture’s common foods, clothing, free-time activities, sports, traditions, etc. This project is providing opportunities for your child to get first-hand experiences with the differences between fiction texts and nonfiction texts. We’re also learning lots of interesting facts! Ask your child for some details.
* Our class now takes part in a Spanish lesson every Friday. This will last through the end of January. What a perfect tie-in with our current multicultural unit in social studies!
This website was a real hit last week:
www.eduplace.com/kids/mw/swfs/robopacker_grade2_t.html
The children need to turn, slide, and flip shapes to pack them into uniquely-shaped suitcases.
Today we reviewed some things we’ve learned about how poets use words. We’ve discovered that poets sometimes describe how things look, how things sound, or how things move. In each instance, we read one or two poems and then used those as models to write our own poems.
This afternoon we moved ahead to a more complex use of words: describing how something is like something else…or describing something as if it were something else. Without being introduced to the words simile and metaphor–although that is just around the corner!–the children dug deeply into two poems featuring these literary elements. Ask your child about the poem which described clouds as sheep…or about the poem which showed how rain is like a mouse. The poem our class wrote together today showed that rain is like music. Ask your child about the rain poem he/she wrote independently!
Has your child mentioned that we’ve started a poetry unit?
The children have listened to a wide variety of poems during the past week–about animals, foods, favorite activities, special places, and more! After listening to and looking at a copy of a poem, we’d discuss what made the poem effective. Then the children would wrote their own poem in the same style. Ask your child about writing poetry.
After writing a handful of poems, your child chose one to read to the class. This was quite a treat for the listeners! Your child can give you the details. He/she is making a final copy of this poem to display in our classroom.
Students enjoyed using two interactive map activities recently. Here are the addresses, in case your child would like to do these activities again…or would like to demonstrate his/her map skills for you!
www.mywonderfulworld.org/toolsforadventure/games/adventure.html
(National Geographic)
http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/gogeorgego/gogeorgego.html
(PBS Kids)
Enjoy!
Your child is working on pages for a book about traditions
around the world.
All around the world, children lose teeth. What do they do with
these teeth? We recently learned about “tooth traditions” from
different cultures.
Most cultures also have special traditions for celebrating birthdays.
After sharing our own birthday traditions, the children learned how kids around
the world celebrate their birthdays. This provided an opportunity for the
children to think about WHY some cultures might have similar traditions. The
children used our globe to figure out why people in the United States might
have some traditions in common with people from Canada…and also with people
from England. Talk with your second grader about why some cultures might have
similar traditions.
We learned that pinatas are common at birthday parties in Mexico.
If your child would like to play an online pinata game that involves learning
some Spanish words, try this:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/hispanic/pinata/game.htm
