Week of March 7th

Hello families- 

There's certainly an element of spring fever this week! It's been a fun, energized week of second grade. 

Highlights of the week include:

• We had Hands on Nature this week.  The topic was water this month.  We saw a puppet show, learned about the water cycle, drew our own water cycles in our Hands on Nature journals, tried out our own experiment and witnessed several experiments led by our Hands on Nature Volunteers.  Thank-you Janet and Julia for coming in and helping us learn so many things about water.  Ask your child what they learned.
• Working on addition strategies, counting money and 3-D shapes in Number Corner.
• Learning about two dimensional shapes. New terms that you can reinforce at home include quadrilaterals, triangles, parallel lines, vertices, sides, parallelograms, trapezoids, lines of symmetry and the list goes on! 
• Adding focus statements and more elaboration to our informational writing pieces. As well as making sure our writing will make sense to the reader.
• Continuing to record the phases of the moon on a classroom chart as well as in our Science notebooks.  We also have started thinking about patterns happening throughout the year in nature.  
• Reading more informational books and practicing comprehension strategies to help us learn more from the books we are reading. 
• Continuing to read "BFG" by Roald Dahl.  Hoping to finish this book up next week.  We're at the most exciting part of the book!

Thanks for continuing to send in boots for our muddy playground and snow pants/jackets for the cooler days. 

Dynamic Dates will be coming home in the Friday Folders. Let me know if you have any questions! They're due by Tuesday, March 15. Team Firefly is looking forward to enjoying lunch and milkshakes with our lucky winners! 

Conferences are in just over a week! Here's the link to sign up if you haven't had a chance to already. Feel free to email if the dates and times don't work for your schedule. 

Have a wonderful weekend,

Nancy

Week of March 1st

Hello families, 

We've had a short, but great first week back from break. We've been getting back into the rhythm of school and starting some great new things. 

A few highlights of the week include:

• Starting informational writing projects (topics vary from underwater disasters to puppies to babies to Star Wars). 
• Starting an informational reading unit and finding books that teach us new things and make us say "Wow!"
• Observing the phases of the moon and making predictions for what the moon will look like next. Please note- we're not trying to explain how the sun/moon/planets interact, we're trying to have the children observe, notice, question, hypothesize, etc. They're coming up with great theories and working really hard! 
• Beginning a math unit on geometry. 
• Celebrating Read Across America Day. 
• Practicing flexibility with our wacky schedule, lack of snow and chilly temperatures!

It's been a wonderful week! Have a great weekend,

Nancy