3D Shape Fun!!!

We've officially introduced 3-D shapes! This has been such a fun math topic, but a little tricky for us to understand! When we start talking about faces, vertices, and edges things can get confusing! So for all of our visual learners out there we came up with a solution! ....Build the 3-D shapes using marshmallows!

I created a worksheet to accompany the activity so students could practice counting the edges, faces, and vertices as oppose to just making the shapes. The children loved the activity, and they worked so nicely together, helping those who had a hard time understanding. 

Some students even challenged themselves and made shapes that were a little bit harder when they finished early! 

Of course we had to eat all of the left over marshmallows!! 

Fact vs. Opinion

Sadly, we are coming towards the end of our Camouflage unit. The students have absolutely loved this unit! We have spent so much time discussing animals that camouflage, how they camouflage, and why they camouflage. This week we are reading the story, "Octopuses and other Sea Creatures" and focusing on fact and opinion. To go along with our story we decided to make "Fact Octopuses". Students went back into their selection story to find facts about octopuses. I'm so pleased with how well they turned out! They are now proudly hanging from our ceiling, and we are all feeling like we are learning from under the deep blue sea!

Now You See Me...

Today we start our new unit in our Imagine It! series, "Camouflage"! To introduce this unit we learned what it means to camouflage and the different ways animals can use camouflage. Then the students had a chance to practice camouflage for themselves!

Each child was given a white butterfly then challenged to camouflage that butterfly somewhere around the room. I was very impressed with how creative they got!

We're going to keep these butterflies hanging around the room until the end of our unit to help remind us of the types of camouflage! 

We have a dream...

Happy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to all! Today we spent an extensive amount of time talking about Dr. MLK and how he impacted history. We wrote our own "Dream" speeches of changes we would like to see in the world today. Take a moment to talk to your child today about some changes we discussed about some changes you would like to see!

2nd Grade Science Fair...

So at our school we are in full science fair mode! All of the upper grades are completing their individual science fair projects, but we couldn't let 2nd grade miss out on all of the fun! With that being said, we decided to complete a class wide science fair project.

We've been learning all about the scientific method and how to properly conduct a science experiment. As a class we came up with our very own experiment: Which fast food cup with serve as the best insulator? We chose three cups to test: McDonalds, Panera, and Chik-fil-a.

We hypothesized that the best insulator would be the Chik-Fil-A cup. We came to this conclusion because the cup was styrofoam. Next we had to test our hypothesis! We used ice cold water and every 20 minutes checked the temperature of the water to see which cup was staying coolest the longest. 

This was a great exercise in reading temperature! 

Then we had to record our results and write our conclusion! 

Turns out our hypothesis was correct! Chik-Fil-A cups insulated the water longer than the McDonald's and Panera cups! 

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!!