2H Class Blog!: Dec. 18th News

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Mrs. Healey’s Classroom News (12/18/15)

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What We've Been Up To:

We're in the home stretch of 2015! Your children have had a great week working hard while also taking the time to enjoy this wonderful holiday season. From all of us in the Owl classroom, we wish you a very happy holiday!

*Reader's Workshop: This week, we continued looking very closely at the characters in our stories. We learned that by studying the entire page, we can find evidence of a character's traits in their actions, thoughts, words, and expressions. We had a lot of fun practicing this skill with a holiday favorite: How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Looking closely at this page together as a class.

When putting all the pages together as a class, we quickly learned that characters can change throughout a story, and it's important to pay attention when a change occurs!

Many students have been reading books in series in order to examine characters, After the holiday break, we will officially launch our series unit and every student will be wrapped up in great series. It's a true milestone for second grade readers! They're doing great work!

*Science: Mrs. Joly, and her team of scientists at home, continued our Oobleck exploration and had some interesting findings to report! Using one cup as a contol, she found out for us just what happens when you heat Oobleck and when you freeze Oobleck! Thanks, Mrs. Joly!!

At first, heating caused the Oobleck to dry out--separating the cornstarch from the water.

Mrs. Joly took the Oobleck off the direct heat, which caused it to melt more as we would have expected.

Finally, Mrs. Joly reported that Oobleck froze extremely quickly.

While our Oobleck investigation had concluded, we still had a lot to study regarding solids, liquids, and gases. We asked the question, "What will happen when we pop a balloon filled with a solid, filled with a liquid, and filled with a gas?"

Clearly, the solid filled balloon was not solid enough! It did hold what shape it had, however.

When the water balloon burst, it rapidly splattered over the pavement.
[We don't have a picture to show the popping of the gas-filled balloon, but all of us have witnessed THAT before :)]

Our final exploration of the week involved the question, "Can solids change shape?" Starting with one starburst, we used our hands to add pressure and heat, then combined all of our starbursts together. The result? Solids CAN change shape! They had a great time drawing detailed drawings of how the starbursts changed.

*Math Workshop: This week during math workshop, we began measuring. We discussed different tools used for measuring as well as different units. We listened to the tale of the King's foot and learned how standard units of measurement came to be. Working with a partner, we measured objects (and people!) around the classroom using a "King's foot".

On Friday, we put our measuring skills to the test and started creating checkerboards. We hope to have these fun games completed and sent home in time for the holiday break!

*Holiday Cheer: It's hard to believe that holidays are nearly here. Time flies when you're having fun! We took the time this week and worked hard to truly appreciate this season of giving. Our little owls worked hard on completing their family gifts (hope you love them!), learning how some of our holiday traditions came to be, and enjoying some holiday stories (of course we've been reading some Gingerbread stories to get in the spirit for our decorating party next week!)

After hearing The Legend of the Poinsetta by Tomie dePaola, we participated in a guided paint-along. Check out their gorgeous flowers!

We also had fun following a glyph code to create a personalized gingerbread men! Can you figure out which little GingerKids are represented below??

Just a reminder:

*At 9:30, on 12/23, we will enjoy the second grade tradition of decorating gingerbread houses. If you’re available, we’d love to have you join us! It’ll be fun decorating (and snacking!) to celebrate with our families and friends. Our wonderful room parent, Jen Norton, has sent out the list of materials needed for this event. If you have any questions, please let me know!

*Finally, to enjoy the season of giving within our classroom community, 2H will be participating in a mug exchange! Please send your child to school with one, wrapped “coffee” mug (available in all sorts of varieties, inexpensively at Walmart, the Dollar Store, and Target). It would be great if your child could write their name and the date on the bottom of the mug as well (ex: From, Ashley, 2015). We will enjoy a swap as we read a classic holiday tale. By the end of the story, each student will end up with a new mug! What will go perfectly in their new mug? Hot chocolate, of course! We’ll enjoy sipping on hot cocoa on our Polar Express Journey.

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Wishing your family a very, happy holiday and a safe, healthy, wonderful new year! I hope to see you on Wednesday at our holiday celebration, but if I don't see you to wish you in person, then enjoy the holiday break and we'll see you in 2016!!