Christmas Around the World

Our second grade class has been learning about how people from all over the world celebrate Christmas and other holidays during this time of year.  The student have made laterns from India celebrating the Festival of Lights for Dawali, Christmas Moose from Canada, Santa (Joyeux Noel) Ornaments from France, Poinsettia wreathes from Mexico, and the traditional Christmas Trees from America.  We have also created dreidels for the celebration of Hanukkah and made little informational booklets on many other countries and celebrations. 

December Update

Hello second grade families,

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week.  The class and I have been very happy with having a normal week for this week and next week. We definitely had a lot packed in last week with the butterfly projects, the field trip, the winter concert, and report cards going home.  It was the busiest week of the school year so far! Thank you for all your flexibility and your availability to be part of our learning!

Report cards went home last Friday.  Any families that have two households will be receiving the second report card in the mail. Maybe you already have them.  I hope parents saw that my narrative comments on the report cards were on the back page near the bottom.  You should all be very proud of your children. The students have been doing fantastically, and are becoming more independent in their learning.

·         This week’s spelling words focus on endings and middle parts of words.  Some students are working on words that have endings with nk, mp, nd.  Other students are working on words that have middle vowel teams such as ee, ie or (vowel consonant silent e words like “theme”).

·         In math we are transitioning into studying about geometric shapes and using vocabulary such as: two dimensional, three dimensional, angles, points, and sides.  We are also learning about measuring in centimeters, inches, and feet.

·         Even though we are moving forward in our math learning, the students still review skip counting by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, 25’s, 50’s and 100’s.  They are also continuing to practice their fact families, and their addition and subtraction equations from 0-40.  The students will be practicing their place value using ones, tens, and hundreds throughout the year and they also continue to show their understanding using coins and money.

·         In writing the students have been practicing editing and completing final drafts of their work.  After the winter break, the students will begin typing papers as final drafts.

·         The “What I Need” reading groups have been going well and the students are continuing to make progress in their reading comprehension, sequencing, fluency, and other skills in reading.

·         We are wrapping up our unit about India and keeping in touch with Micah.  Micah is a student from Arizona that went to India for this semester. We have been reading and asking him questions about daily life through his blog- that he shares with our classroom. We have our last video session with him tomorrow morning and then he gets to come back to the US next week.

·         In science the students have been doing a fabulous job learning about how water travels, and how erosion changes the environment. The students have been having fun with the mystery science experiments that they have participated in.

I hope everyone has a nice night and a great week! If there are any questions feel free to email back.

Sincerely,

Ms. Mac

Christmas Crafts

Having such a couple of busy weeks with our butterfly projects, field trips, and the Winter Concert; we made time to slow down and do some fine motor skill crafts and activities for the holiday. We have also been learning about geometric shapes such as trapezoids, squares, triangles, rhombi, circles, and hexagons. The class has been learning about length and height as well as perimeter during their geometry unit. The students used these shapes to create winter and holiday illustrations of characters and landscapes.  They also completed colorful construction paper holiday designs lead by Mrs. Shepard.

Community Presentations of our Monarch Butterfly Projects

Our second grade class has worked diligently for the last three months on the Monarch Butterfly project.  These are pictures of parents, staff, and multiple grade levels coming to support the learning of these hard working second graders!

Gingerbread Goodies

The students have been getting into the winter season and were eager to decorate the annual class gingerbread house with Mrs. Krom, for the Gingerbread House Festival!