Pictures from last week!

First the boats were tested for their ability to hold some cargo. This is the winning team's vessel. It had a capacity of 52 cubes.










Then, the 53rd cube made it sink.




















Here is the winning team with their construction. Good work, teams!

The best day!

This is part of a comment I overheard today during science. The students worked so well in their groups today constructing their boats. I was extremely impressed! The kids got into their groups this afternoon and were given two clumps of clay. Only one person could actually touch the clay (the vessel constructor) and that was determined by the highest student number in the group of 4. It was the rest of the group's job to talk to the constructor about how to make the boat so it had the greatest capacity. The goal was to construct a boat that had the capacity to hold 10 little base ten cubes. The teams who met that goal earned 5 Dolphin Dollars. Then, the competition was for the team who constructed the boat with the greatest capacity. The winning boat was constructed by N.Y.'s team and it held 52 cubes!! S.S.'s team came in second with a capacity of 20 cubes. Tomorrow, a letter will come home instructing students to create their own boat, of any material, that will be tested next week in class to hold ceramic tiles. The rules and directions will be outlined clearly in the letter. Every student is asked to construct a boat for the contest. The bottom must be no larger than 3" by 4". I tried to post some pictures here, but Blogger won't let me!! I will send them to the list serve - so ask you parents to show you! Congratulations, everyone!

Tomorrow is our fall party. Please bring your costume to put on before the party. No weapons, blood or gore, or really scary costumes should come to school.

Busy, busy, busy!!

Whew, what a busy day we had in 2G! Look at all we did today!

First we started by reading my favorite Halloween book from my childhood, Spider Saves Halloween. We are working on remembering the important details of the stories we read so we can retell them to someone. Being able to retell story events in order is a very important reading skill. We put our retell on a pumpkin since the story was about Spider dressing up as a pumpkin!

Next, we had Mrs. Montemayor come in and give us a lesson about the artist, Winslow Homer. He is no longer living, but his art work lives on. He was famous for sea scapes and nature scenes. I didn't share this today, but Homer was the FIRST artist I did a research project on in my art classes in college. I love his work. Your child brought home the picture they made in class today. They used watercolor pencils. If you have a paintbrush at home, allow them to use some water to brush over their art work and bring it to life! When it dries, it can come back to school and we will hang them in a display. The picture we learned about was called "Snap the Whip."




Here we are busy creating our own nature scenes!







Later in the day, we spent some time making shapes out of clay to see what we could make float and what we could make sink. We found that it was much easier to mold the clay into sinkable shapes than floatable shapes. Here are the mad scientists in action:









We spend some quality time charting our data so we could keep track of our observations, just like real scientists!!

Go take a bath!

We are jumping right into science this week! We have been learning about what makes an object sink and float, but we have been learning really challenging vocabulary, like buoyancy (NOT girlancy, remember!), displacement, and cargo. Talk about some of those words tonight at bedtime. If you take a bath tonight, think about those words while you are trying to make yourself float. Why can't you make yourself float? To displace means to remove physically out of a position. How much water is being displaced when you get in the tub? That means, how much water has to "get out of the way" so that your body can fit in the space where the water previously was?

If the weight of your body was lighter than the water you displaced, you would float. It would be like the weight of the water has the strength enough to hold you up. Of course, as we will continue to learn - the SHAPE of an object affects how much water gets displaced, so SHAPE is just as important as the weight of an object!

NOW, if your body was heavier than the water that was displaced when you got in the bathtub, you would sink! Think of Archimedes, a Greek (meaning from Greece) mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer....and TAKER OF BATHS! He is the one who came up with the idea of displacement and buoyancy - WHILE HE WAS IN THE BATHTUB!! Think of where the world would be if he never thought of this!

Red Ribbon Week:Remember that tomorrow is Backwards Shirt Day.
Thursday is Sports Jersey Day.
Friday is be comfy day - wear your sweats!!

Fun practice!

This week, we worked on inferring while reading. Making an inference means that we use the clues in the story to help us put ideas together that the author didn't actually WRITE in the text. Here is a great website that helps you put some clues together to figure things out!

TRY IT!

Have a great weekend!

Fire Prevention Month

Today, the entire second grade had a chance to visit with a fireman from The Aurora Fire Department to learn about fire safety. We learned about ways to be safe at home, including changing our smoke detectors TWICE a year, having a smoke detector in every bedroom, and, of course, not playing with matches or lighters! It was really great to see all the gear a fireman has to wear and we got to see the truck as well (but we didn't go inside)! We'll be learning more this week about how to keep our family safe in the event of a fire or an emergency.

As a reminder, tomorrow is picture day! Thursday is Dolphin Depot. Our book orders are due on Friday! Mrs. Grezlik is opening her Treasure Box on Friday for the students to spend some of their Dolphin Dollars!! Let's have a great week!

Science Fun!

Today we had our first round of science fun. We are working on thinking about the science behind what makes something sink and what makes something float.

We filled our bowls with water and took turns in our groups choosing an object, predicting whether it would sink or float, and then testing it and writing our observations down. It was a great deal of fun and the kids had some great discussions about it! Here we are in action!

Half a Day, Half a Post!

Fill in the missing parts with what you remember about our half day!

We started our day by trying to find a funny way to use our vocabulary words. 4 of the words from our Harcourt story are......

We wrote quick paragraphs about names we would choose for ......,

During Daily 5 time, we did.......

Mrs. Grezlik explained that next week during Daily 5 time, we will get to....

Our math lesson was on frames and ......

One mistake we can easily make during frames and arrows work is......

tomorrow, we have at test in.......

Our picture day is .........

Blind Sorts

Hi kids!
I hope you went right home and told your parent all about earning the Fish Party today! What a great way to start the day! Way to go with the great behavior in specials classes!! Keep earning those fish!

Today you have a Blind Sort to do with a parent. While there is nothing to write for a blind sort (therefore, nothing to turn in), here is a quick reminder of how to do a blind sort.

1. Grab your cards from your zippered pouch.

2. Grab a parent or an older sibling and ask them sweetly to help you for 10-15 minutes.

3. Dump your cards out and find your headers (or the header patterns and header words if you are the blue group). Put them out on the table or floor.

4. Have your parent or older sibling call the word out to you (NOT SHOWING THE WORD - THAT IS WHY IT IS CALLED A BLIND SORT).

5. You decide, after listening to the word - where the word should go. You point to the spot (under which header) it should go. If you decide, after your parent or older sibling places the card down where you directed, that the card is in the wrong sort column, you may move it. If you make more than ONE (YES, ONE!) mistake during this blind sort, start again (if your parent or older sibling has time).

The goal is to place all the words in the correct column WITHOUT looking at the spelling pattern AND making no mistakes! GOOD LUCK!

Columbus Day fun!

Hi everyone!
I hope you are enjoying the beautiful fall weather! The girls are outside with their friend dressing up the yard for fall fun! Madison is ready for the Bears game tonight and Kenna is on the left with the messy hair (who needs to brush hair on a day off??)! I hope you are having some fun this weekend!


Here is something fun we saw in our backyard yesterday:



One of our neighbors has this great hot air balloon and every once in a while, they tether it (which means attach it so the balloon doesn't float away) to their truck and give the kids rides up and down. It was too windy to do rides, though, so they had to bring it back down and they will try it next weekend. It was very exciting!

I apologize for not posting last week very much! Next week, my mom is coming home from her rehabilitation center and my life will be back to normal! YIPPEE!

Check out the new math website I posted in the right margin. Remember that Wednesday is a half day of school - early dismissal at lunch time.

See you tomorrow and BOY - do I have a SPECIAL SURPRISE for YOU!!

New Math Sites

Some parents have asked for some more math websites to visit, so check out the links in the right margin under Math Websites. Some of the sites offer math worksheets that you can modify to meet your own desires and print out for practice!!

Today, we started word sort groups. We are starting with 3 groups, pink, green, and blue. These groups were identified based on the Words Their Way spelling inventory that was given the second week of school. This inventory tells me what spelling patterns they have mastered and which list I need to start them on. You might find that your child tells you the list they have is too easy, but this is word study so your child will benefit from the study that we do with the words. The sorting is good for classification purposes. Today's assignment was to do a regular sort like we did in small group today.

I am so excited to report that yesterday, I collected the homework sheet from the kids' binders and we had almost 100% of the kids write down their reading selections EVERY DAY AND got parent signatures!! I cannot even express my gratitude that you are so supportive and encouraging on this communication piece. Thank you!!

Second grade PE night is TOMORROW!! Our class's session is from 6-7p.m. Bring the whole family!

What's an icon?

Today we had our first skill lesson in lab. We are learning about using icons in Microsoft Word. We have to learn all the parts of this program so we can use the program to its fullest potential. If you have a computer at home, play around with the icons on Microsoft Word and find out what they all mean! Today, we also saved a document in our own personal folder. We will use our jump drive soon!

We took our word wall AND word study test today. Tomorrow, we will get our new word study list. We will do this in small groups. We will study the list this week AND next, since it is a shorter week next week. We also are working together on our reading selection test. Remember, there is no school on Monday and early dismissal next Wednesday.

In writing, we are studying what makes a paragraph. Today, we started to create a paragraph about art. We are beginning to understand that a paragraph needs a main idea sentence and some detail sentences about ONE topic!

Wednesday night is our second grade PE Night. Our class's session is in the gym from 6-7 so bring the family and dress for some activity!! See you then!!