Word Work

This week we began our regular spelling routine.  The children sorted the words according to their group pattern, which we call an "open sort".  Today we will go to the computer lab to play games with our word lists on the "Spelling City" website.  I will send an email with details about this!

Tree Observations

This week we began a year long study of our beautiful Dogwood tree outside our classroom.  We used our senses to observe and record what the tree felt like, looked like, sounded like (in the wind), and smelt like.  We also took tree measurements of the trunk circumference, the main branches and secondary branches.  We made predictions of how much the tree might grow by spring.

Fishing for Ten

This week we learned a new Math game called "Fishing for Ten"  It's very similar to "Go Fish", except rather than looking for matches, players are looking for compliments of ten.  Directions can be found below.  You can play with a regular deck of cards at home, too, using Ace as the number one, and removing the Jacks, Queens and Kings.  

On Friday Mr. Court came to talk to our class about Angell rules and expectations:

This week we wrote about goals we have for second grade.  We started with a categorizing brain frame for goals at home and school.

In Math this week we practiced skip counting on a calculator. Ask your child how to count by 2's, 5's, 10's, or even 100's or 1000's on a calculator.

Number Grids

One of the tools we will use most in math this year is the number grid.  This week we looked for patterns in the number grid, and practiced using the number grid to count by tens.

Ask your child to explain what the picture below means:

Birthday Celebrations

This week we celebrated three birthdays: Zeyad, Jessie and Maho!

Maho taught the class about the Hichi Go San celebration and showed us photos of her in her commemorative dresses.

Jessie taught the class how to make origami flowers:

Reading Buddies!

Today we met our 4th and 5th grade reading buddies!