| Today, during the Otter Assembly, our class shared information about our service learning project to raise money to help provide nutritious school meals for our friends at Circle of Peace School in Uganda. Everyone was REALLY was really excited to learn that for $1 they can help the second grade raise money for Circle of Peace School AND have a uniform vacation day on Friday, April 28. |
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The children truly enjoyed our read-aloud today, Mo Willems' hilarious new rhyming picture book, Nanette's Baguette. The book follows Nanette on her first solo trip to the bakery. But . . . will Nanette get the baguette from baker Juliette? Or will Nanette soon be beset with regret?The setting of the book is a French village. After listening to the book, the children got to experience the smell of a warm baguette, the sound of the "crack" when a baguette is broken into pieces, and the taste that Nanette couldn't resist (with a little jam). We also watched the short video below that shows Mo Willems making the handcrafted-paper-modeled village he used in the illustrations. One of the skills we have been learning in our current math unit is graphing, and there is no better way to practice graphing just before Easter than jellybean graphing! Each child received a muffin cup full of jellybeans and sorted them by color, counted them, graphed them, and then answered a variety of questions requiring them to interpret the graph and use their addition and subtraction skills. The graphs were GREAT and the children really liked being able to eat a bean here and there and take the beans that they graphed home to eat -- a very tasty treat! The children and our chaperones seemed to thoroughly enjoy our field trip to the Carpenter Theatre today for the Richmond Symphony Orchestra performance of Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The performance introduced the children to the many instruments that make up a symphony orchestra, and they learned about the families of instruments in the orchestra by listening. It was a treat for all of our 2nd grade violinists to see the symphony violinists play as part of the performance. More pictures can be found on our Photos :-) page. To celebrate their last day teaching Spanish in our class, our Spanish teachers from Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School brought a variety of fruits for the children to enjoy as they were learning to say the name of each fruit along with the phrases, “Me gusta” and “No me gusta”, which mean “I like” and “I don’t like.” We’ll miss having Spanish class on Wednesdays and our teachers! As part of our daily reading activities, the children have been working to better understand contractions. They use them all of the time, but didn’t have a clear understanding that a contraction is actually a word made by shortening and combining two words – words like can't (can + not), don't (do + not), and I've (I + have) are all contractions. To practice their learning, they’ve been having fun playing contraction concentration during word game/academic free choose time. Below is a video that memorably illustrates making a contraction Everyone was so excited to start swimming lessons today at the Downtown YMCA. Second grade is an ideal time for children to take on new challenges, learn more skills, and enhance their feelings of competence in a variety of areas, including swimming. Through "Learn to Swim,” the YMCA offers children lessons in swimming skills and water safety that will keep them safe and build physical and social skills. It is also a lot of fun! Visit Photos:-) for more pictures. Yesterday we celebrated the birthday of favorite author Dr. Seuss and Read Across America day! The children buddy-read some of their favorite Dr. Seuss books, and then each child received a copy of the biography, Dr. Seuss: The Great Doodler by Kate Klimo to add to their home library. This biography is about Theodor Geisel and his transformation from a doodler into the beloved Dr. Seuss. It shares his life from the time he was a little child who and always had a sketchpad and pencil in hand. To his time in the Boy Scouts and his a penchant for creating zany creatures. It shares how he grew up with a love of books and words from his mother, and how his inventor father spawned a wildly imaginative side. It’s no wonder that these qualities led to the beloved work of Dr. Seuss, the Great Doodler. It also Includes fun facts and several of Dr. Seuss’s original sketches and artwork! How strong are different magnets? Let's do an experiment to test their strengths! The children had a BLAST with this experiment. Each table team was given for different magnets (each a different size and strength), a box of paper clips, and a blank bar graph to chart their individual results. The experiment was to see how many paperclips the magnet can attract, hanging the paperclips end-to-end with only the first paper clip touching the magnet. Check out more pictures at Photos:-). Students associated with the TRiO organization visited our class today to share their stories, read aloud to the children (they LOVED Queen Latifah's book Queen of the Scene), and then do an activity related to the lesson focus of self-confidence/self-esteem. Each student was encouraged to draw a picture of someone who believes in them, supports their dreams, and helps them stand tall. After the activity, each TRiO student shared his/her family story and talked about getting in to VCU and what college is like. Each TRiO student is the first member of his/her family to attend college, and each is majoring in something different: nursing, dentistry, business, and marketing communications. The children asked many questions about college and shared their dream jobs ranging from zoo keeper to bank owner to basketball player, and more. |
AuthorMrs. Tappen and her CategoriesArchives
April 2017
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