SNOW DAY 2011!!

Welcome back from 2 days off!  I hope everyone survived the snow, and more important the SHOVELING!  Thankfully I have the very best landlords ever who did a great job shoveling!  We all even built a snowman.  It was a work from home day for them!  I found the snowman kit at the Christmas Tree Shops.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that store!  You can always find something super fun there!








I found this great idea on FirstGradeParade and decided to try it with the class.  The children had to write tally marks as they interviewed the rest of the class asking what they did over the snowdays.  We decided that most of the children in the class had a snowball fight (with their siblings!) and the least amount made a snowman.  I was so surprised!  

When we get back to school on Tuesday we will start talking about Famous Americans.  I am taking ideas I have gotten on the secondgradeteachersclub.ning site as well as in the blogging world to help the children grasp the ideas.  We will start with Martin Luther King Jr., then go into Rosa Parks, then Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.  By the end of this unit the children will be presenting their own Famous American projects.  MsWinston.com has a terrific unit that I started using last year and added my own little bits and pieces to.  We will also be continuing our penguin study.  I need to post pictures of the super cute penguin pocket folders they made on Monday!

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Study Island Is Here!

Our school now has access to a great resource for preparing our kids for the state standardized tests.  We have purchased a building license for a web-based program called Study Island, which is accessible to students from school or home.  If you have Internet access, your child can access Study Island from home as well as school to prepare for the state assessments. I have sent home your childs personal password and login.  Please feel free to use it as much as you want at home! :0) We will be using this program in the computer lab each Friday as well as in class during different times in the day.

 We are excited about the potential benefits this program can bring to our students, and we encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity by using Study Island. 

Welcome 2011!!!

I found this great idea on Ms. Durnings Blog.  I made tracers for the bread and the butter and had the children trace and cut out their own "toasts".  They had to write a wish that they had for 2011 on the butter.  Mrs. H. and I made our own bulletin board on the wall so that we could have these awesome "toasts" hanging on the wall.  I think they came out pretty great!

Here is a picture of the start of our new bulletin board.  While the children were in Music, Mrs. H. and I covered the cabinet doors with blue and white fadless paper to make the doors look like an iceberg.  Next week we will start our penguin unit and this is where our handprint penguins will be living!






We had indoor recess on Friday and when I came back from lunch this is what Mrs. H. had come up with.  Can't leave that woman alone for a minute!!!  ;0)  I think it came out super cute, we decided that we could have the kids make a snowflake to put around the snowpeople.  










This week is going to be super busy as we finish up our snowman book reports and work on our penguin unit.  Check back soon, I hope to add more pictures of our work!

Math Facts Practice!

I had sent home a pin number with the childrens report cards at the beginning of December for a website called, www.xtramath.org.  Each week I get an email from their servers telling me who has practiced and how they are doing. I have noticed that many of you have tried using it at home AND that you are doing very well!  That makes me SO happy!!!  We have started using it as school as well.  It allows for daily, individualized practice for each child.  When your child has mastered addition and subtraction it will then go into multiplication! I encourage you to have your child use it many times during the week.  If you need your pin number again, please let me know and I can email it to you!

Math Facts Practice      < Click here to go to the site!

Grinch Day 2010

I found this idea on a first grade blog called firstgradeparade.blogger.com.  I added some things that made it more appropriate for Grade 2 and presto-chango, we had Grinch Day 2010!!

The children started their day by hearing the Grinch read How the Grinch Stole Christmas outloud.  We then brainstormed words that we thought would describe the Grinch.  I wish I had taken a picture of the web, you would be amazed at the words the kiddos came up with!  After that, we constructed similies and glued them to a Grinch that I drew traced.  We made text to self connections, learned about how characters change and then compared the book to the movie.  We were surprised at how much was changed!

Below are some pictures of the Grinch and Max.  Clearly, the teachers had just as much fun as the kids!

Ms. Daly dressed up at the Grinch.  Mr. H. says I should have worn green pants instead!  Something to add to the costume for next year!!



Mrs. H. dressed up as Max!  Isn't she a good sport?!

Celebrating the Season...

Today the children and Mrs. H. decided that our little room needed some holiday decorations.  So who am I to complain!  The little monkeys have been working very hard to get through our Unit 2 Benchmark test in Journeys that I thought, what a great way to reward them for their hard work!  We made reindeer with our feet and hands, handprint wreathes and tomorrow we will be working on stockings.  I think they came out pretty great if you ask me.

Earlier in the day we made an Elf Glyph that came from mathwire.com.  What a FUN activity.  It did take a lot longer than I had anticipated so we weren't able to share our observations today.  I'm hoping to do that tomorrow.  Also, I used the photocopy papers to make the elves, next year I think I'll make tracers so they come out a bit more unique!

First Post!

Well here it is!  My very first post on my very first blog!  I am SUPER excited about this new venture.  I have a website that my class uses, but it is so hard to keep updated.  I thought this might be a good place for me to keep in touch with my students as well as a place to network with other teachers.

Let me know what you think! :0)