Clay, Friction, and God Given Rolling Pins

The students have been working with clay in Art.  It is a product called Sculpy.  They needed to make the clay plyable with the heat from their hands.  The clay had to be the right thickness to press the leaf designs into the clay and cut around it with clay tools.  Today they added the idea of making small pots.  Clay needed to be made plyable with heat from their hands and then chunks of that clay were rolled out with our palms to make ropes.  The ropes wind up the edges to create the sides of the pot.  Then the students needed to smooth out the edges and the cracks.

We are like that clay.  We are made plyable everyday by the love of the Lord, and the devil is hard at work to make our clay sag, become too thin, and break.  The Lord is always there to remold us and make us strong.  The Holy Spirit keeps us close to God through incredible faith!  Jesus will smooth our sin out and give us hope!  "Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness."

Art, Science, and Faith all in the same project!  We were indeed busy learning today!

A Busy Day! A Great Day!

The students had an interesting thought today.  What if we tried not to erase anything on the white board for whole day?  What if we left as much up on the board as we could?  Would we be able to fill it with our ideas, thoughts, and then show it on the blog?

Well, it took some clever thinking and some things did get covered up by pieces of other projects. However, for the most part this picture shows pieces of each subject including math, handwriting, beginning thermometer skills, time to the half hour, social studies, language, story comprehension, character traits, our blessings and even our Memory work!  Each time I look I find a piece of something else we worked on during the day.  Mrs. Samuelson decided to place her sign language game board on the closet doors in the back of the room.  We all thought that was a wise move.  

The picture also shows that we made it to 20 points!!!!!  We are going to celebrate having 20 outstanding moments of grandness as a class by watching a movie.  Mrs. Fritz will buy our whole class popcorn to eat with the movie on Friday afternoon!  

Monday, Oct. 13th

The Daily Homework Sheet has a list of each evening's homework.  The sheet was created to help you notice the pattern of homework in second grade.  This is the same pattern throughout the school year.  If you need an extra copy of this sheet please let me know and I will get one out to you right away!  You can also find a copy in your student's boomarang folder.

We are all excited about the Bazaar on Wednesday morning.  This event even fits into our Reading Story and Social Studies concepts of using your money wisely.  Our Reading Story this week touches on budgeting for a large project.  You are going to love the creativity of the principal in the story. Students will be bringing "Mr. Tanen's Tie Trouble" home on Tuesday to read outloud to you!

Rocks and Leaves

We created our own version of metamorphic rocks today.  Those rocks are created in God's world by incredible pressure and heat.  Our rocks were rather fun to make!  Please ask your student about our time in science.

Pressure and heat were also used in second grade art yesterday.  The students had to knead clay to make it plyable and then use a leaf from God's creation to press into a thin layer of clay.  You will be able to see our designs after they are baked and painted.

Fall is an awesome time to rake leaves, make leaf piles, and run through leaf piles.  I hope you get a chance to enjoy all three!

The Bazaar is next Wednesday.  Your child doesn't need very much money in order to purchase cookies, plants, bookmarks, or crafts.  We window shop together as a class and then the kids get to spend some time making purchases.  It is nice for us to be able to mingle with congregation members and enjoy a break from the normal routine.

Today we met our PreK buddies!  Everyone went outside to play together and find out something about eachother.  The first thing we learned as second graders is that there are more PreK students than their are 2nd graders.  It is a encouraging partnership.  We will do more with our buddies through out the school year.

Outloud Readers are the Best Readers

We are working to make connections in our brains.  We call it our super highway.  Reading outloud is a fun way to store words, ideas, and research.  It also helps with character development and the comprehension of story plot.  This week we used the knowledge already stored on our super highway to generate information about spiders.  The students filled the whiteboard with information!!!  We could share a lot about these creatures.

Our journal writing is also about spiders but it takes our information and gives it a twist.  How would life be different if the students were spiders?  Would their names be the same?  Where would they live?  What would they like to do in their spare time?  Would they be friends with cats, dogs, or even guinea pigs?  What would scare them?  The ideas began to flow and the writing is awesome!  I have been impressed by the imaginations of the students and the creativity they show in their journal writing.  On Monday we will work on pictures to go with the stories and then during the week we will be publishing our writing and illustations.

Art ideas have connected our Fall leaves to animals.  Mrs. Germain worked with the students to construct hedgehogs.  The students will tell you about their design and how it was made.  Here are some snapshots of the final product!  Look for the black noses and then their eyes to find the animals.

They will look even better in the hallway without the tinfoil they are drying on!

Page Numbers and Guinea Pigs

Page Numbers

     If you had been in Chapel with us every week since school began you would have seen great growth. The second graders are beginning to get the idea of finding their own pages!  This skill of finding page numbers is very useful!  It helps keep us on task in the classroom and in church.  It also helps us think about the amount of a number and where it falls in relationship with other numbers.
  
For instance.....
     Where is page number 42 if I am on page number 127?  Is it forward or backward?  Is it one page turn away or a bunch of pages away?  Do I need help to find it before the task begins?

     Keep working on page numbers in different books.  Pull out a big dictionary and give the page finding game a try.  Your family can always take a trip to the library and use a really big book to explore page number fun.  The whole family can have a page finding race.  

Guniea Pigs and Health Class

    Our guinea pig, PatPat, is experiencing stress.  He has such a trouble handling change that he loses his hair behind his ears.  It comes out in patches and leaves bare skin.  Poor PatPat missed the students and their stories this weekend.  He stayed at school and was cared for by Mr. B., but he just couldn't take the lonely classroom.  The solution a guinea pig uses to tell people he is tense, worried, and lonely is hair loss.  The cure is fairly simple! PatPat gets big doses of Vitamin C, lots of time being held wrapped up in a towel, and many stories read to him.  It is sort of like when the students are sick.  
     Our Health book is helping us read and talk about how we handle stress, worry, happiness, and tension.  We have shared the idea that we all need to do something with those emotions.  The class came up with ideas like talking to someone, tossing a ball, kicking a soccer ball in the yard, punching a pillow,  or even yelling a loud noise to let out that feeling and be able to move on.

     If you have a moment we would like to know what you do with emotions at your house. They do not need to be sad feelings.  Our good feelings need an outlet too!  Usually it comes with a smile, a hug, giggles, or playing a game.  Pastor Hoelter challenged all of us to hug eachother today!  He said we NEEDED to be reminded of a very important fact..... Our God Loves Us! He is right!  Hugs, smiles, and the love of the Lord are sorely needed in our homes, our famlies, and the whole world!