Taking Care of our Community

This week our class worked on a project that will benefit our entire school community. Over the winter, the mulch on our playground gets packed down. It needs to be turned over in the spring so that it provides a soft cushion under our play structure. In the past we have had volunteers come in during April vacation to work on turning the mulch, but this year the classes at Floral Street School took responsibility for our playground. We spent a half hour on Wednesday this week using rakes and hoes to turn over the mulch and pick up trash that accumulated around our playground over the winter. It was a hot day and we worked hard. We can be proud of the work we did every time we go out for recess this spring! The students were all happy knowing that the work that they did would benefit their friends in their school community.

Earlier this year we celebrated Random Acts of Kindness month at Floral Street School. Since cleaning up our playground was an act of kindness, students started talking about this again. Over this past week I noticed several students helping out a friend without being asked. Whether it was helping to clean up a spilled water bottle, helping a friend clean up a messy table, or asking a friend to play at recess-there were lots of acts of kindness going on. Our principal, Mrs. McCubrey, shared a video with us about random acts of kindness. We watched it during dismissal on Wednesday this week. The video shows the effect random acts of kindness can have on a community. The class loved it so much we watched it twice! If you click on the words "shared a video" above, you will be directed to the site where the video is found. It's only 5 minutes long, but it's definitely a video that will leave you smiling and shows the power of just one random act of kindness!

Science is AWESOME!

This trimester we are learning all about solids, liquids, and gases in science. We started out our study of matter by using books on solids, liquids, and gases to do some research and note taking. We used these notes to make some FANTASTIC posters explaining what we know about matter. These will be hanging up in our room after vacation, so be sure to stop by and take a peek. We also did some fabulous work explaining what a gas is, together with Mrs. Beall's class (liquids) and Mrs. Peterson's class (solids). That work is displayed on the bulletin board outside of our classroom. We have already noticed a number of students in our school stopping by to read our facts about gas!

This week we had two explorations in science that were particularly awesome! To learn about the properties of solids we were able to handle various density cubes made from lots of different materials-including aluminum, copper, brass, PVC, acrylic, oak, and pine. We touched and observed the cubes and together with our groups we came up with some properties we could use to describe solids. We also had a chance to use a balance scale to weigh the density cubes in order to determine which one was heaviest and which one was lightest. (Our predictions were pretty close!)

I think our favorite experiment this week was the day we made carbon dioxide. (You know a science experiment is well-received when the "scientists" clap when it is done!) Our goal was to show that a gas will spread out to fill up the available space, which in this case was a balloon. We also learned that carbon dioxide is denser than air because a balloon filled with carbon dioxide will fall to the ground faster than a balloon filled with air. Check out the pictures below and be sure to ask your second grader to tell you what they know about solids, liquids, and gases!

Here comes the carbon dioxide!

We couldn't believe how quickly our balloon filled up!

Pouring in the baking soda

Our gas anchor chart

Pouring in the vinegar

Attaching the balloon to the bottle

Here it goes again!

Dropping the balloon filled with carbon dioxide

TV Turnoff Week and the Read-a-thon!

This week is TV Turnoff Week at Floral Street School! Our goal is to help our students find ways to spend their time away from the TV. In class we have been brainstorming activities that we could do at home instead of watching TV. We have come up with some great ideas! Some friends suggested playing outside. Others suggested doing an art project. Several friends thought they would like to use this time to get more rest and someone even suggested building leprechaun houses! Of course many students suggested that we read, read, and read some more! That's a perfect suggestion because this week also kicks of our annual read-a-thon! The read-a-thon runs from April 8th to April 21st. Information on the read-a-thon went home in last week's communication folder. This year we are hoping to raise over $3500. This money will be used to fix the playground equipment. The students who read the most and the classroom that reads the most will receive special recognition, so get out those books and read! Even though vacation is next week, be sure to read every day so you come back to school ready to learn!

New Reading Log

Our New Reading Log

In September I had said that we were going to be switching to a new reading log in January. Well, better late than never, right?! Since more and more students are now reading chapter books instead of picture books, a new reading log will be going home on Monday, March 25th. This reading log will work with both picture books and chapter books. Each night, students should record the title and author of the book they are reading, along with the number of pages they read that night. There are lots more spaces for recording than there are days in the week because we have some very avid readers in our class who requested more space to record all of the books they were reading at home. Please don't feel that filling up all of the spaces on the reading log is a must do. The expectation is that 2nd graders read at home for at least ten minutes each night. Book logs will continue going home each Monday (or the first day of that week if Monday is a holiday) and will be due each Friday. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you need some help guiding your child toward books that are just right for them. Happy reading!

4th Grade Reading Buddies!

Today we had our first meeting with our fourth grade reading buddies! This morning students chose a just right book during our Daily 5 time and practiced reading it either to themselves or to another student in our class. We reviewed the expected behaviors for "read to someone" and were very excited to meet our reading buddies for the first time! The 4th graders from Mrs. Edgren's class spent a half hour with us this afternoon. We sat EEKK style (Ask your child to show you how to sit that way and to tell you why we sit that way when we read to a buddy!) and parters took turns reading to one another. We practiced our fluency and comprehension and got to hear some great new books! More than one student was excited to discover a new book that they are now interested in reading on their own! We plan to meet with our reading buddies once a month for the remainder of the school year. We are looking forward to getting to know one another better and having some great reading adventures together!

Sitting EEKK style!

Practicing "Read to Someone"

Sitting EEKK style!

Everyone was very focused on their books!

Focused readers!

Valentine's Day and Random Acts of Kindness

February is Random Acts of Kindness month at Floral Street School! Every student at school enjoyed listening to the story Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch earlier this month. After we read the story together we brainstormed a list of acts of kindness that we could do both at home and at school. Each student at Floral chose one act of kindness that they wanted to do and wrote it on a bear that they brought home to decorate. If you visit Floral this month you will see those bears hanging in the hallways. Take a minute to stop and read them so you can see what we plan to do to make our community a better place this month! Last week at our school meeting first and second graders got the chance to share their thoughts on the story we read and even share some ideas for random acts of kindness with one another. We are keeping our eyes open this month so that we can "catch" one another committing acts of kindness! If you happen to "catch" a student being kind at Floral this month, be sure to let me know so we can recognize that student for a job well done!

We will be celebrating Valentine's Day this Thursday afternoon! Students will be making a Valentine's Day craft, sharing cards with one another, and will enjoy a healthy snack. If your student is interested in bringing in Valentine's Day cards for the class on Thursday, please look for the list of names in this Monday's communication folder. Bringing in cards is an option. Students do not have to bring in Valentine's Day cards, but if your child chooses to do so, please be sure to bring in enough for everyone in the class. Please do not send in any candy with your child's valentines so that we can comply with the district wellness policy.

Have a great week!

This Week in Second Grade...

     This week in second grade we had a lot of fun creating weather instruments that we are going to use to predict and report the weather next week! We created a thermometer (that is working so nicely in our sunny window that the red water inside it overflowed!), a barometer (which is showing high pressure today!), an anemometer to measure wind speed, a rain gauge to measure precipitation, and a wind vane to show wind direction. We are very excited to start observing and recording the daily weather next week!

     We read a book about Martin Luther King, Jr. called Young Martin's Promise. We learned a lot about what Martin Luther King was like as a boy and created a list of character traits we could use to describe him. We came up with dozens of great words, including confident, assertive, brave, fair, courageous, and kind. We had an awesome discussion about fair and unfair and came to the conclusion that Martin Luther King's famous dream really did come true! As one student said, "If Martin Luther King could see this list of character traits we wrote about him, he would feel so happy!"

     Math introduced something incredibly exciting to second graders this week. Multiplication! Everyone saw this as a sure sign that they were officially "big kids" and we were all very excited to get right to work! We solved multiplication number stories using pictures and number models and drew arrays to help us solve problems. We also read two great books about multiplication-Each Orange has 8 Slices and Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar. Both books had challenging problems that we had fun solving!

    Entertaining beginnings were the name of the game in writing this week. We learned how to hook our readers by starting our stories with an action (What did you do?), a sound (What did you hear?), a thought/question (What did you think/wonder?), or dialogue (What did you say?) Everyone came up with lots of great ideas for starting their stories with a bang!

     Enjoy the long weekend and get lots of reading time in!