Thursday, December 1, 2011

Caution: Long Post Ahead!

It's been a busy, busy month in 2nd grade (hence the lack of blog posts!) So I think it'll be best to sum it up using pictures... 
The kids finished up our unit on the 10 Commandments in Religion and worked in groups to draw and write about one of the Commandments. I love watching them work together!

 I'm so impressed by their ability to focus and work well together, even (and especially!) when I choose the groups for them!
 We made 3D Family Trees and connected it to Spanish. The trees were used to decorate the hall for the Multi-Culti feast. They were such a nice touch!

 We've been moving along steadily in math focusing on various concepts and already getting to our subtraction facts! We've learned about telling time to the half hour, lines of symmetry, fractions, adding money, tally marks, and adding multiple addends to find a sum.
 We finished our Character reports and the students presented them to their classmates. Each student created their character from a book of their choice and filled a baggie with drawings of at least 5 items that the character needed to have along with two sentences describing why or how that item helped them.


 Mrs. Harabedian surprised us as our Mystery Reader. She read "Miss Nelson is Missing" and had to leave in the middle of the story....
 Only to return as the awful Mrs. Gorf!!!
 The kids had fun taking a picture pretending that the awful Mrs. Gorf took over their classroom. This picture makes me laugh! I love it so much! Their expressions are so theatrical!
 We celebrated our heritage by feasting on a variety of cultural dishes at our Multicultural Feast, which started off with a heartfelt prayer service of thanksgiving for our beautiful families and heritages.
 The students were so brave to stand up in front of all of their parents and peers to read a prayer that they wrote. I am so proud of them!!
 We had more character report presentations!
 And right before Thanksgiving, we made cookie turkeys using oreos, candy corn, reese's, maltballs and frosting... yum!! Best part of all -- we made them with our 8th grade buddies!!
 The 2nd graders ADORE their buddies, so it was so fun to watch them work together to make a delicious treat.

Wow -- is it really already December??? Stay tuned to see what THIS month has in store for us! (Hint: elves, Christmas Around the World, more Mystery Readers, exciting Hero Project, field trip to kick off our Dinosaur Unit, and lots, lots more!!)