Mrs. Jackie King

This morning I read the class a short story about the significance of Memorial Day.  I heard lots of stories about where families are going this weekend- camping , to cottages, visiting friends in Michigan, etc.  I hope everyone has a wonderful, safe weekend.  I reminded the class about their "Vacation Guide" that is due on Tuesday.  Have a fantastic 3- day weekend!

We're finishing our chapter in Social Studies all about our country.  We've found out about our government. We also learned about symbols of our country.  And today we learned about some natural and man made features of the USA.  We sang "America the Beautiful "together.  Then I read a book to the class called America The Beautiful .  It's a wonderful picture book with photos of many different places in our country.  We also learned about the woman who wrote the poem  "America the Beautiful" - Katharine Lee Bates.  The poem was not intended to be a song but was eventually turned into a song.

Although I was in school today, I wasn't in the classroom.  I was doing individual testing using the Dibels test. This is the last time this year  the boys & girls will be tested on early literacy skills.   Today we celebrated Ryan's birthday.   Everyone enjoyed his cupcakes at lunchtime.  Congratulations to Erin.  She finished her sticker chart today.  She received a homework pass & book from the book basket.  Remember- tomorrow is the last day for Accelerated Reader tests!!

We had a wonderful time this afternoon on our picnic.  The weather was perfect as we took a nice long walk to Klein Park and arrived just as our pen pals were arriving.  The boys & girls met their pen pals and then ate lunch together.  After that we had a scavenger hunt. The children received a baggie & a list of things they had to find in the park.  Some of them were easy- like find something green.  But some were very hard.  Some of the things they had to find were an insect, a feather, and a multicolored stone. There were a few groups who actually found everthing.  It was a lot of fun- and the boys & girls cleaned up the park without realizing it!! Then we had some relay races using bean bags & gator balls (thank you Miss Cronin). We all said goodbye to our pen pals & walked back to school- very tired!!

We've spent the past several weeks learning all about adjectives.  We know color and number words are adjectives.  Words that tell size and shape are also adjectives.  Last week we learned about special adjectives called articles ( a  and an).  Today we learned that many words that end in er and est are also adjectives.  I read the class a really cute book called The Bug Book by Maria Fleming. It had many pictures of bugs with adjectives to describe each one.  We saw a studious bug, a cranky bug, a glamorous bug, and  a courageous bug to name just a few. 
 We also had a fun time this afternoon at the Student -Staff volleyball game.  The Staff won the first game.  The next two games were won by the students!  There is still some candy left for sale.  Miss Cronin will be selling it at lunch time  each day until it's gone.   Our Super Stars this week are Erin & Emily.  Congratulations!

This week the class has been working on a poster of their favorite story from our Reading book.  They wrote the title and author of their story.  They also had to tell about the setting and draw a picture of it.  Then they wrote about what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the story.  They also had to write about their favorite part.  This afternoon the class had a chance to share their posters- and tell everyone their favorite story.  Favorites included Officer Buckle, Swimmy, Princess Pooh, Brementown Musicians, and Charlie Anderson.

We are learning all about equations --in second grade!  We actually have learned about equations all year long.  We now know that an equation is equal on both sides of the  equal sign.  But today I showed the boys & girls that instead of using a blank  line to write  the missing number , we can use a variable such as "x" or "y".  I also told them that they were doing 7th grade Math- that perked up their ears.  We did quite a few problems, and they got a kick out of using an "x" or "y".  This morning the entire school formed an honor guard outside as the funeral procession for one of our former students came to Queen of Martyrs.  The boys & girls were very quiet and respectful.

We're ready to start our new chapter in Math- all about adding and subtracting 3-digit numbers.  We've been doing this all along on the board and in our notebooks, so it shouldn't be too hard.  But since we haven't done "trading" in a while, some boys & girls have forgotten how to do this.  Today we played a game called "Sum Game".  The boys & girls had to put their marker on 2 addends and then add the numbers together.  When they found the sum, they got to mark off that space on the game board.  The first person to get 5 in a row was the winner.  The boys & girls were actually practicing addition with trading- but it was more fun because it was a game.  We'll be doing a lot more of these kind of problems in the next couple weeks. 

We finished all our cursive letters today! The class was sooo excited-now we know the letter "z". So I had the class write as many words as they could think of.  They practiced all the lower case letters- and did a great job! Now we'll try to do as much work as we can in cursive writing. Dan, Aidan R., Aidan B., and Jack all received a free pass to Great America today for participating  in that program.  

In Math we've started to talk about division -and what it means.  Last week we used pennies and divided them up among children, so that each child had the same amount. Today we learned how to write a division sentence.  We read some division stories and drew pictures to show what the division meant.  Then we wrote a division sentence to go with each story.  We even had a few stories where the answer didn't come out evenly- and we had a "remainder" left.  We're really going to be ready for 3rd grade now!!
 Our Super Stars this week are Robert and Jack.  Congratulations!  Molly also received a certificate today from Study Island.  She had a total of 103 ribbons and finished all the tests at the 2nd grade level.  Way to go Molly