Exciting News!

From Cole:

Three butterflies hatched today.

From Mrs. Clough:
SURPRISE!  We had three butterflies hatch today, and in fact in the time from when Cole wrote on the blog to when I left school, there were four butterflies and a fifth on the way!  Very soon I believe our net will be filled with butterflies! :)  The kids were very, very excited to say the least!

Aside from that exciting news, we worked on a caterpillar/butterfly life cycle art project today.  I will post pictures of the final project tomorrow but wanted to share a photo of the process today.  I drew and cut out stencils and the kids then folded a piece of construction paper "hamburger style".  They traced the pattern and then cut it out but not cutting on the folded edge, so that it could open up.  Once they cut it out they colored/designed one side to be the caterpillar, then turned it over and turned it sideways to draw/color the chrysalis, and finally they opened it up to the inside to color a butterfly.  Three major parts of the caterpillar life cycle!  They really enjoyed the activity and we also spent time looking at a non-fiction butterfly magazine and saw the eggs they lay up close, which the kids were thrilled with!

Working on the butterfly!  More pictures tomorrow of the final products!

In math today we played Count on 1 or 2 Bingo!  All of the students really enjoyed playing and I will be sending home copies of the game for you to play at home tomorrow.

Filling up their BINGO cards! :)

Look for more pictures of the art projects and of our REAL butterflies tomorrow! 

Also parents-tomorrow the 2nd newsletter will go out as well as the 2nd book order of the year. These will be due on Friday September 21st. As a reminder, school pictures are on September 26th and while you are not required to buy a photo package, if you would like to your money/order is due on or before the 26th.

Thanks for stopping by!

Mrs. Clough

Half Day!

From Lilly:
We did math in our math book.  We had fun.  

From Mrs. Clough:
Well, we had our very first early dismissal day of the 2012-2013 school year and the time flew just like it does every day!

We started our day by reading a piece of poetry together-echo reading and choral reading.  The poem entitled "What I'd Cook for My Teacher" really humored the kids, and me too! :)  They drew pictures of the jellyfish sandwich, centipede soup, and a-choo-berry pie to go along with the poem in their poetry notebook.

We have finished reading our books by Mark Teague (author and illustrator) and today we made a pictograph where the students had to draw an illustration from their favorite story and place it on our graph.  It turned out pretty well....like I have said many times before, I have some great artists in my classroom!

As a class, our favorite Mark Teague book was Pigsty (it was my favorite, too, although they all are good!)

In math today, we spent a lot of time talking about making estimates, or good guesses.  As Lilly mentioned, we also had fun in math! To do that, we focused on the number of pockets we had on our clothes.  After we estimated, the kids came up and got  counting cubes for each pocket they had on their clothes and recorded the number of students who had a specific number of pockets using tally marks.  Finally, we counted carefully to determine exactly how many pockets there were in our class today by grouping the counting cubes into sticks of 10.

All of our "pocket" data on the board today.

Last week I sent home a newsletter and mentioned making positive phone calls home.  Due to time constraints, I will be emailing parents who provided email addresses in their student information sheets and I will call those who I cannot reach through email.  I am more than willing to be accommodating but am realizing that making 23 phone calls is challenging! BUT-I definitely have many positive things to say about each and every child in my classroom!

Tomorrow will be another very busy day!  I have a fun caterpillar/butterfly project to start, more fun math activities, and I am estimating that we may have our first butterflies in the next two days!  So stay tuned for that!

Mrs. Clough

Monday and Tuesday Posts!

From Brayson:
I had a good time in math today.

From Chase:
We had a great day and a fun time.

From Mrs. Clough:
First I want to apologize for not getting to you last night! We had a crazy busy day here in 2nd grade.  Lots of learning and fun activities going on!  Over the weekend and while I was gone on Friday, ALL of our caterpillars turned into chrysalises!

I stayed late yesterday to transfer all of our chrysalises into the net so that when they hatch, the butterflies will fill our cage!  :)  The kids were excited to see this today.

We have been doing lots of new activities and "investigations" in math dealing with money.  We are learning and making observations about all of the coins and how they can be traded to make other equivalent amounts.  Today we played a game with partners called "Collect 25cents".  It was quite fun. I even played a little bit too!

In Shared Reading, we have begun talking about SCHEMA.  Everyone's schema is different but it is all about being able to make connections to what we're reading and building to/adding to our OWN schema.  We have read two stories so far, Hazel's Amazing Mother and Koala Lou to begin our discussions and work with making connections.  We are beginning with text to self connections.  When you are reading with your child at home, ask him or her to make a connection to the story you are reading!  We have practiced this a lot already and have also done some writing activities to go along with it.

Today we also took some time to talk about how historic September 11th is.  Without getting into many details, we talked about why we celebrate, or remember, September 11th as Patriot Day.  I chose to share the book September 12th: We Knew Everything Would Be All Right.  It is a book that was written by a group of 1st graders in Missouri and does an excellent job of addressing the events of 9/11/01 in an extremely kid-friendly way.  I then took some time for questions and discussion, without getting into many details because I recognize it is a very sensitive topic, especially at a young age when this is an event that happened before they were even born!  Regardless, I hope everyone was able to take a moment today to reflect on the events that occurred 11 years ago today.  

A couple of reminders:

*Tomorrow, September 12th, is an EARLY RELEASE AT 1:40PM...please note the time change (it is different from last year)

*School Picture packets and information went home today.  You are not required to buy your child's school pictures.  However, if you would like to, please fill out the information and send your money with your child to school on or before Wednesday, September 26th!

Thank You!  Check back again tomorrow!

Mrs. Clough

We have Chrysalises!

From Hannah:
We got to see  our  caterpillars.  Most of the caterpillars formed a chrysalis.  We also got three more vocabulary words.

From Mrs. Clough:
It was another busy day in 2nd grade, and cooler I might add!  I think the kids and I are all grateful for Mother Nature's cool down in temperatures!  As Hannah mentioned, we had exciting things happen overnight and some of the caterpillars have formed their chrysalis.  The remaining caterpillars have formed into their "J" shape.  Once the kids got to see their own caterpillar, we had a caterpillar walk where they could go around and look at their classmates' to see the changes taking place.  As you can imagine, there was a LOT of excitement in our room today during science.

Chrysalis!  We learned that many changes take place inside of the chrysalis although no scientist has been able to determine exactly how.  We do know that the caterpillar's front 4 "True legs" will grow long and slender and become the legs of the butterfly.  We also know that the caterpillar's 12 eyes will turn into 2 compound eyes with segmented lenses!  

Not all of our caterpillars turned into chrysalises but many of them have turned into a "J" shape which means they are spinning their last bit of silk before they transform into a chrysalis!  I predict many of the "J" shapers, will be chrysalises by tomorrow sometime!  :)

Caterpillar walk, looking at our friends' little creatures with magnifying glasses!

In other news, Hannah mentioned we learned three more vocabulary words while re-reading the book Six Dinner Sid.  We also worked on counting materials carefully and determining whether there were enough counting cubes for everyone in our class (each group of students got a bag full of cubes of different amounts) and if not then how many more cubes did they need.  We continue to work on telling time to the hour as well during math time.

I will be gone tomorrow at a science training, so a substitute will be in the classroom.  Please encourage your child to follow the Marion Way and our classroom agreements while I am away! :)  I trust that they will do a  great job!  Also, Happy Birthday to Connor tomorrow!  I'm sorry I won't be there.  In your child's take home folder tomorrow, there will be the first weekly newsletter of the year.  Please read through it-there are just a few reminders and upcoming events!

Have a great weekend (there will be no blog post tomorrow)!

Mrs. Clough

Half Way Through the Week!

From Lilly:
We had fun at recess and we played house.  I was the tiger.  We had a good day of school.

From Mrs. Clough:
A semi-cool down has arrived and we could tell a slight difference in the building already (I'm cheering at my desk, as I type)!  Lilly says we had a good day at school and for the most part I certainly agree!  We needed a few reminders as a class of our classroom agreements:

I Will...

1. Listen while others are talking.

2. Always raise my hand!

3. Keep my hands and feet to myself.

4. Use nice words when talking to others.  Be kind to everyone.

5. Follow directions.

6. Follow the Marion Way (The Marion Way is my way.  I am respectful, responsible and honest. Follow me!)

We had what seemed like a very long morning with no special today due to DIBELS testing.  Thank you to all of the teachers who helped test 2C's kids! :)  With the extra time, we did some extra math activities and we also spent more time with our caterpillars and learning even more about molting and spinning silk!  I do believe that some of the caterpillars are going to begin forming their chrysalis very soon so watch for pictures of that!  The kids continue to be very excited to get to see their caterpillars and it is a joy to watch them interact!  We read a book that told us even more information about different kinds of caterpillars and moths/butterflies.  There are thousands of species in the world, which the kids found fascinating!  

We spent a lot of time practicing silent reading and buddy reading today-a total of almost 40 minutes!  We are building stamina so that once we officially start the Daily 5, the kids will be prepared and be able to handle long periods of reading while I am working with small groups!  Kudos to the kids for keeping at a voice level 1 or whisper 2 for that period of time today! :)

Tomorrow is Thursday and it will be another fun filled, learning day!  The weather forecast shows it a couple of degrees cooler, too!  

Until next time,

Mrs. Clough

HOT DAY!

From Chase:
We saw our caterpillars.

From Mrs. Clough:
As Chase mentioned, we did get to see our caterpillars today and saw how much they grew over the weekend!  The kids were so excited to see all of the changes that took place over the weekend.  Today we discussed what molting means and why our caterpillars molt, what frass is (caterpillar waste), and how/why our caterpillars spin silk. Ask your child about those things!  We reviewed them many times, so hopefully they can teach you!

Aside from learning more about the life cycle of a caterpillar, we read another book by Mark Teague (author/illustrator) about Ike LaRue and we'll continue reading a couple more books by this funny man over the next couple of days.  We also learned how to use the 100 Chart as a tool and resource in our math workshop, along with reviewing telling time to the hour.  We have a little chant and dance move that we repeat every morning when we say good morning to Judy (our big clock)..."The little hand tells the hour, the big hand tells the minute!".  Your child should be able to show you our little dance move, too! :)  At the end of the day we began our Text Talk Vocabulary series by reading Six Dinner Sid.  We will be reviewing the story for the rest of the week as well as introduce, learn and practice using the vocabulary words from the story.

As the post title says, it was a HOT DAY!  In looking at the forecast, it does appear that a slight cool down is headed our way!!!  Cheers! :)  However, the building will probably stay warm for a while so please continue to dress your child cooly and send a water bottle!

More news and pictures tomorrow!
Mrs. Clough

Pictures and News from Friday!

From Philip:
I had a great day.

From Mrs. Clough:
I apologize for not getting this post done sooner!  It was a busy holiday weekend and I hope everyone enjoyed the warm weather and time with their families and friends!  Friday was another fun and busy day (as Philip says, he had a great day!), and I remembered to get pictures of our caterpillar friends as well as pictures from our math activities!

The kids continued working during "Math Workshop" as a part of our Investigations Math curriculum. They had to come up with an efficient and organized way for me to clearly see that they had 20 and then 30 counting cubes, before building any object they wanted.

While some kids were using the counting cubes, the remaining students worked on covering the area of a shape with pattern blocks and recording their different ways of covering the area.  We will finish these activities tomorrow!

As I mentioned in previous posts, I have excellent artists in my classroom and the kids were working on their caterpillar/butterfly packets, creating drawings of a caterpillar life cycle and coloring the mallow plant.

Here are our furry crawling friends...each of the students have their own caterpillar in a cup just like this.  At the bottom of the cup (the creamy material) is the food from the mallow plant.  The kids were all excited to see if and how much their caterpillar grew just from Thursday to Friday.  I stopped at school today and I have to say, they will be even more excited to see how much growing they did over the long weekend!  More on that tomorrow!  :)

While we have a short week coming up, it will still be very busy!  Please stay in touch with us this week to hear more about our caterpillars, math activities, writing (we're going to finish our autobiographies), and more!  Hopefully a cool down is in the forecast, but please continue to send your children to school in cool clothes and have them bring a water bottle!

Mrs. Clough