Week Wrap-Up for February 20-24th

Students enjoyed learning about the US Presidents during our presidential unit.  We spent time researching (online) about our very own president, completed fact posters, and began our presidential powerpoints.  We also wrote about Abraham Lincoln and did a great job!

Week Wrap-Up for February 12-16th

    Happy Valentine's Week!  What a great week it was!   We learned about homophones and the continents/oceans, wrote Valentine cards for our loved ones, exchanged Valentines with our classmates, and celebrated Ms. Maness's big birthday! 

    A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning and spelling.  We played a homophone game and illustrated our homophone pairs.  The students did a great job!



Aaron- "Bawl-Ball"



Hunter- "Sea-See"




Hannah- "Hare-Hair"

 


Devion- "Son-Sun"

 

Auburn- "I-Eye"




Harley- "Won-One"



Students loved exchanging Valentine cards with their classmates!

 

Here are our Valentine Cards to our loved ones...

These are the Valentine bags we made to hold all of our cards from our classmates. 

Valentines for my sweet class!

Finally, we enjoyed surprising Ms. Maness on her 60th Birthday.  Ms. Marla taught all of the students songs from the 1960s.  We sang "Barbara Ann" by the Beach Boys, "Buttercup", and others, as well as  "Happy Birthday" to our beloved principal.  Each grade also surprised her with a 60 item birthday present.  Some of our favorites were 60 Marbles (in case she lost hers), 60 Candy Kisses, 60 Candy Hugs, and 60 Puzzle Pieces (for when life gets puzzling).  As you can see, everyone had a great time!





Happy Birthday, Ms. Maness!





 

Have a great week!

Mrs. Willett



Week Wrap-Up for February 6-10th

    We had an eventful week once again in second grade.  We began our study of animal and plant life cycles in science.  So far, we have learned about the life cycles of the sea turtle, dragonfly, frog, pumpkin, and horse.  We watched an amazing Discovery Science video about sea turtles and how we can help with their fight for survival.  Even though we are far from the coast, we learned how all of our efforts are important.  The kids were most interested in recycling plastic bags and keeping the beaches clean when we visit. Did you know that thousands of sea turtles die each year from ingesting plastic shopping bags that they think are jellyfish?  We were also amazed to find out that a baby dragonfly (a nymph) lives in the water and hunts other insects/tadpoles.  It also does not have wings until fully grown. Nature is amazing!

     We are also learning how to regroup when subtracting 2 digit numbers.  For those of you my age or older, regrouping is the same as "borrowing".  It is a very challenging skill, but so far so good!  Here is a great site that the kids enjoyed practicing this new skill on using our mini laptops.  NLVM-Base Ten Subtraction.  They especially liked when the ten stick turns into ten ones when regrouped!  Check it out!



Second Grade with Mr. Joey



My Class with Mr. Joey



     Finally, it is with a heavy, yet  grateful heart that we say good-bye to our friend (and aide-extraordinaire), Mr. Joey.  His last day was Friday and we were all a bit emotional.  The kids presented him with a Valentine cookie and mini Louisville Slugger bat that they each had signed. They even sang songs learned in music class to him!  Good luck in college and baseball, Mr. Joey!  We are extremely thankful for all you have done for us!  You will be missed!

Mrs. Willett

Quote of the Week~February 13, 2012

"An aware parent (teacher) loves all children he or she interacts with - for you are a caretaker for those moments in time."~Doc Childre

Valentine Card Exchange & Snack

We will have a Valentine Card Exchange and Snack on Tuesday, February 14th.  I sent home a list of student names last week, but here it is again just in case you didn't get it...

Paige

Hunter

Rudy
Chance
Aaron
Rylie

Adyson

Lee
Janson
Winter

Auburn

Tyler

Devion

Aslan

Mallory

Harley

Allison

Hannah

Bayleigh      

                                              

Quote of the Week for February 6, 2012

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.

Clay P. Bedford

Week Wrap-Up for Jan. 30-Feb. 3

Welcome to February!  We've had a very busy and exciting week in second grade.  Technology and a groundhog were the highlights of the week!  We began our week anticipating the weather forecast from a special groundhog by the name of Punxsutawney Phil!  We made weather predictions of our own, wrote & typed letters to Punxsy Phil with our special requests (which we turned into a class book), made  "groundhog" graphic organizers, and created a giant pictograph in the hall!  Eleven children predicted that Punxsy would see his shadow (more Winter weather), while 8 others thought he would not see his shadow (early Spring).  We were super excited to see this video on Thursday morning http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/punxsutawney-phils-groundhog-day-prediction-15497076! 

Here we are using our laptops to type our letters and take AR tests at our desks...

And here is our giant pictograph (as you can see we had to continue the graph on the ceiling)...

     

  

Here is one of the links that we used to research Punxsy and his hometown in Pennsylvania-http://www.stormfax.com/ghogday.htm.  As you can see, he is sort of a big deal!  

                As I mentioned before, technology was a big focus this week.  Not only did we type our letters on our lap tops (above), we used our class set of Ipod Touches to reinforce skills taught in math.  We loved the Math Ninja and Pizza Fractions apps!  As you can tell
the kiddos were pretty excited!


Finally, we would like to thank Mrs. Lisa Campbell, our own WGS Tech Gal, for bringing the Ipads to our classroom on Thursday!  We learned all about how to "hold our Ipads like babies" and how to use them appropriately.  We even practiced two-digit addition with regrouping on a cool math app.  No pictures are available this time.  I was too busy playing with my own Ipad to take any!

Look for our letters to Punxsutawney Phil in the lobby this week. Our class will be in the writers' spotlight for the next two weeks!

Have a great week!

Mrs. Willett