The First Week of School!

     Can you believe that we have almost finished the first week of second grade?! We have had a great week getting to know one another and learning about the routines and expectations in second grade!

    This week we have read the following books together: Frog and Toad are Friends, Frog and Toad Together, Brave Little Monster, The Crayon Box that Talked, Chrysanthemum, The Important Book, Froggy Goes to School, and The Pain and the Great One. Ask your child to tell you about their favorite book from this week!

     We did a lot of work in school this week! We wrote friendly letters to Frog from Toad (or to Toad from Frog) and wrote conversations between Frog and Toad. We designed t-shirts that taught our classmates about ourselves and drew pictures of what we thought a scientist did. (We even met the ULTIMATE scientist! Ask you child to tell you about this fabulous person!) We designed bathing suits for toad (or frog) and illustrated a picture of our special reading space. We started talking and thinking about our hopes and dreams for the school year. We wrote pages for our own class important books. We also took a reading survey that asked us to think about what we liked and didn't like about reading. As you can see, we have had a VERY busy week! Has anyone had a tired second grader at home each night?!

     Tomorrow we will be sharing our artifact bags! We will also be writing captions for our scientist pictures. Tomorrow is our first school meeting! All of the first and second grade classes will meet with Mrs. McCubrey and Ms. Day as we work on building our school community.

     Have a restful and rejuvenating weekend!

It's Almost Time...

 It's almost time to go back to school and I can't wait to meet all of you! I have been busy buying new supplies and books for our classroom and I plan on spending this week at school getting everything ready for your first day of 2nd grade on August 28th!  It is so exciting to set up a classroom for the new school year! New school supplies are one of my favorite things! I hope you are getting excited for school to start too! We are going to have the best school year EVER!

I can't wait to hear about all of the fun things you did this summer! I just came back from a trip with my family. We went to the beach in New Jersey where we rented bikes to ride on the boardwalk and to Baltimore, Maryland to see the Red Sox play the Orioles. It was the first time I took Aili and Liija to a major league baseball game! They lasted 4 innings before we left our seats to go play on the playground they had at the ballpark! Unfortunately, the Red Sox lost. 

Moms and Dads: I plan on using this blog throughout the school year for two purposes. First, I will post here to keep you informed about any upcoming projects/events/homework assignments. I will also let you know when forms, such as report cards slips or field trip permission slips, are due. Secondly, I will update this blog each week to let you know what we have been doing in school. (I know from my own daughter that often, when I ask her what she did in school that day, she will reply, "Oh, nothing." I know that can't possibly be true, so I hope to use this blog to give you a little window into our daily activities.) From time to time that may include pictures of the students in our class working and playing together. Please let me know if you do not want pictures of your child included on our classroom blog. You can either leave a comment on this post to let me know or email me at hrichard@shrewsbury.k12.ma.us

Enjoy the rest of your summer! If you haven't already, you should be receiving a letter from me in the mail early this week!