End of December

Time to play catch-up on the blog! The students really had a great last week before Christmas break {snow day included!} and they were kept busy with lots of great activities, special visitors, Christmas programs, and the holiday party.

2013 is going to be a great semester and we are so excited to get started with our Snow Unit for January and get back into our school routine.

Saying goodbye to our good friend Nate, he moved to Iowa over Christmas break. We will miss him in our classroom very much!

 We had a visit from Mrs. Claus, who told us great Christmas stories.

Our Christmas program was a huge hit! The students did a wonderful job retelling and singing the story of the Grinch, all while looking WHO-rific! Thanks so much to Mrs. Haskamp for a fantastic program and all her hard work!

Who let the dogs out?!?

 We were still learning during this crazy week! We finished up in math regrouping problems with addition and in science we did an experiment with density.

Would the raisins float in Sprite?

A special presentation for our annual fund. The class who has 100% participation in the donation receives a free pancake breakfast.

Christmas Party

Thanks to all the parents who organized and volunteered to make it a blast!

Spelling Test: Students will have a spelling test like normal this week. The list is a review list, so all the words are from the last 4 spelling tests. A list went home with your child yesterday and the list is in the Spelling Link on the right side of the blog.

Nov. 16-22

Thank you to all the students, parents, and guardians who brought or sent in food and supplies for the St. Paul's food drive for the pantry. I know it is greatly appreciated by everyone. 1 in 4 children will go hungry this Thanksgiving season and by donating what you have, you are helping to feed those children and families.

Tomorrow is the last day to donate for the drive, any bulk item is worth triple points for the competition but like always, ANYTHING is welcome!

St. Paul's third graders with a small section of our pantry

On Monday, the second graders created an insect museum. We could create any insect we wanted as long as it followed the insect rules:

1. A Head

2. A Thorax

3. An abdomen

4. 6 legs

5. 2 antennae

6. eyes

7. And wings {if we wanted}

The students had a great time making their own insects.

 

In science we are continuing with food webs and food chains.

Social Studies we have begun landforms.

Tuesday we got to watch a special performance by Quixotic, an ensemble of artists from various of performance abilities such as aerial, dance, and music. You can visit their website HERE. It was fun to watch our students to fascinated by the performance and "attempt" their own versions as recess. We are so thankful that our students are exposed to all kinds of cultural performances and especially local performers.



Picture taken from the Quixotic website

Due to the Thanksgiving holiday next week, there will be no spelling list. The teachers will be sending home a list for the following week (test on Friday, November 30) with your child next Tuesday.

Nov 5-8

A big week of events for second grade and our St. Paul's community.

The Book Fair has been going on this week. SPEDS had an all-school read Monday afternoon, buddy read Wednesday, Family Book Fair night Wednesday, and the students will be going through the book fair as a class tomorrow. We love an opportunity to do more reading! Get hooked on a great book!

 

 

 

Wednesday we had two special visitors! Author Katie Speck of Maybelle bug books (perfect for our insect unit) such as Maybelle Goes to Tea, and Maybelle and the Haunted Cupcake. We also got to meet Maybelle herself!

Food drive kicked off this week on Wednesday, thanks to all the parents and kids who have donated. Mrs. Gouttierre's class is currently in second place from ECC-2nd grade! Keep it up for the food pantry!

I VOTED!:

For the last few weeks the second graders have been learning all about the election, the process, and the candidates and Tuesday we all got to vote! We casted our vote on secret ballots and learned about our class outcome on Wednesday. The results were 22 Obama and 21 Romney! Talk about a close race!

 

 

In math we are continuing subtraction and working on our facts. We learned about to play Math War Subtraction with a partner and worked on flash cards.

In language arts we worked on making Text-to-Text connections. While we read we can make connections to another book that we have read. Such as reading a book about how butterflies use camouflage to protect themselves, we can make a connection to a book we read about the stick bug also using camouflage.

 

But...our biggest accomplishment this week has been our pencil collection for Atem's project. In all, St. Paul's school, collected..........

12,652 pencils!