Poppin' Up Awesome Adjectives!

We're starting to learn all about adjectives! What better way to help a child learn than with food! Keeping that idea in mind, we came up with a delicious solution...adjectives describing popcorn!!

Every child was given their own share of popcorn. They were to take that popcorn and use their senses to describe it. 

Once they had enough time to taste, smell, feel, see, and hear the popcorn we recorded the results together as a class. Of course we had to record it on little pieces of popcorn and put it into our very own popcorn bucket! 

Meeting Basic Needs

This week we are learning all about basic needs and how those needs are met. To better understand this concept we've bought two plants for our classroom. On one of the flowers we put the sign, "Basic Needs Met". This is the flower we are going to water everyday and give plenty of sunlight.

 

The other plant we labeled, "Basic Needs Not Met". This plant we are shielding from the sun. We are also not going to water this plant. Over the week we will observe the changes between the two plants. We will use these observations to have class discussions on the importance of meeting basic needs. 

UPDATE: It has been a week and we have an update on our plants! Our plant that has had it's basic needs met throughout the week is doing great! The flowers are open and adding a beautiful use of color to our classroom. The flower in which basic needs were not being met, well, it didn't fare as well... 

This was a great way to discuss basic needs and their importance to our everyday life! Be sure to talk to your child and have them share with you the information we've learned!! 

Reading is a HOOT!

Well the first quarter has come to an end! What a fast, fun filled couple of months it has been. At the beginning of the year we introduced our AR reading tree... 

poor thing it was totally lacking some love. I am happy to say that our tree no longer looks like a lonely winter Oak longing to sprout some green. We are now officially becoming a Live Oak (fun fact: Live Oaks differ from regular Oaks in that they are "alive" and green throughout the winter, while other Oaks are dormant and leafless) and wearing our leaves proudly. 

If you're unaware of how our tree works, let me catch you up to speed! Our tree has a branch for each student in our class which is denoted by their precious little owl. When a child reads, tests, and passes a book based off of their current AR level they get a leaf! The goal is to get 50 leaves by the end of the year!! I can't wait to see all the before and afters of watching our tree "bloom" throughout the year. Keep checking back to check our progress and if you're feeling super ambitious read with us! Currently our favorite book is, "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid Of Anything". We're especially really excited about all of the onomatopoeias we find in that book, but that's for another post. :) 

  

Ants! They're Hard Workers

Happy fall y'all! We've transitioned nicely into the weather change and we've begun our new SRA Imagine It! unit. For the next five weeks we will be working on the theme "Let's Explore!" So far the kids have really loved talking about all the various things they can "explore".

This week we are reading the selection story, "Ants! They're Hard Workers" and, you guessed it, talking about this tiny six legged insect we see so often but might not know a lot about.

The first thing we did in learning about ants was to read the selection story, "Ants! They're Hard Workers" We learned about various types of ants, the body parts and their functions, and even how ants build their homes.

Next, we got right to work labeling our ant! We talked about each body part and it's individual function and used our books to help us label an ant of our own! Once we labeled our ant we colored our ant to depict the different ants we read about. 

The kids really loved making these! If you want to make them you can find them here. 

After we spent some time learning about the various parts of the ant and labeling it's body parts we started doing a little research! Each group was assigned a different ant discussed in our selection story and they were to use their books as one resource of information and then the internet as a second source to gather interesting facts about their ant. Once they had enough information, such as, where does this ant build it's home, what kind of jobs does this ant preform, what kind of enemies does this ant have, and any other fun facts, they were to write down their findings and illustrate a picture to share with their classmates. 

       

 

Stayed tuned for all of our adventures yet to come with this exciting new unit!! 

Until then....go explore! 

Watching the clouds roll by!

It's always sunny in second grade, and this week it was extra "sunny" at GCA! The weather was beautiful and it worked perfectly for the lesson we've been learning about: clouds! In science we've been talking about the Sun's energy, the water cycle, and various types of clouds. We were able to take advantage of the clear skies on Monday and put what we've been learning to the test! With our clipboards in tote we headed outside, soaked up some Vitamin C, and wrote about the various clouds we saw in the sky. The four types of clouds we have been learning about are the Cumulus clouds, the Stratus clouds, the Cirrus clouds, and the Nimbus clouds. On this given day we were lucky enough to see three of the four types of clouds we've studied.

There were clouds surrounding us everywhere we looked. Some were big and fluffy (Cumulus clouds) while others were thin and wispy (Cirrus clouds). We even saw a few clouds off in the distance that looked to be carrying rain (Nimbus clouds). Students quickly scattered to find their perfect cloud viewing spot and got to work. 

Some students wrote about one specific cloud they saw in the sky, describing all of it's characteristics and applying it to knowledge learned in the classroom. Some students wrote about all the various types of clouds they saw, noting the ones they didn't see as well. Some even drew pictures to accompany their work.

Welcome to Second Grade!!

Hello, and welcome to our second grade blog!! My name is Ms. McGrory and I am SO excited to use this form of social media as an outlet of daily interactions in our classroom!

Please feel free to "bookmark", "follow", or "pin" this blog and check-in with us frequently! Check out our class newsletter for the week here and be up-to-date with what's happening in our classroom and around our school.

Have a great week, and GO KNIGHTS!

~Ms. McGrory