Time Serving Others

The help the students supplied in the community today was wonderful!  They made the lives of several people easier and shared the Love of the Lord through their deeds.  Mrs. Hahn and the whole staff are proud of the Children of God at St. John School!

Glow in the Dark

A flower was delivered to me on the last day of school in June.  It came with the sadness of moving to 3rd grade and no longer spending the day together in 2nd grade.  The flower came with hugs and love.  It has reminded me of those wonderful blessings all summer long!  Now summer ended and this lovely gift has continued to produce one blossom at a time.  A sweet way to be greeted in the morning at my kitchen sink with such a nice memory.  This is probably the last blossom of the season.  I had to share it with you and hope that it makes you smile as well.  Perhaps this blossom can connect you to an inspiring memory.

Celebrating memories is a great way to bridge to remembering our Baptism Birthdays.  Today is 

Mrs. Samuelson's Baptism Birthday!  She is an encouraging person who comes in contact with every Child of God at St. John School every single school day.  She inspires them, expects the best of them, and loves to see each student shine out the love of God as they travel through the grades!  Mrs. Sam (as the kids call her) brought us a gift of a glow stick to help us remember to Shine Out God's Love!!!! We shined it right back to her today as we wished her the best baptism birthday ever! 

The second graders and I played her the song....

Jason Gray - Glow In The Dark

Even in the darkest place His love can make you radiate!
If the road get rough just keep your head up!
Let the world see what your made of!
His Love's alive in your deepest part.
Like a flame, like a burning star,
You can shine right where you are!
He made you to Glow in the Dark!!

The Cherry on Top!

 Mrs. Germain utilized an ice cream cone technique to help the students portray hues of colors.  The light and dark shades of the same color are hues. Students worked with acrylic paint and added white or black to the original tint in order to change the shade.  Each artistic composite needed to use hues, spacial relationships, and the creation of ice cream cones to support the ice cream hues.

This artist chose the addition of the Cherry on Top which sums up the entire processes.  It was wonderful to see students grasp the technique and apply it to their final work of art!

Creating Word Puzzles

We used our new Spelling Words to create puzzles today.  It is fun to explore our words and have a new way to practice them.  The trick is remembering that the words can't run into other words.  When words to lead to another word you need to have enough space.  Here is an example!

Some students recognized that we were creating our very own Bananagram!

Splitting Shapes

Most shapes can be split in half.  Shapes can be separated by at least one line of symmetry.  It is like discovering a puzzle because some shapes have more than one line of symmetry.  You can split them in half in different ways.   Here are a few shapes and the idea of symmetry.

How many ways can a rectangle be split in half?  Would a vertical line (top to bottom) work?  Would a horizontal line (side to side) work?  How about an oblique line (corner to corner)?  Cut out the rectangle from the worksheet your student brought home today and give it a try by folding it corner to corner.

A circle has a many possibilities for a line of symmetry.  It has so many choices for symmetry that they become difficult to count.  This can be described as an infinite number of lines of symmetry!

Hopefully you are having fun with the shapes of symmetry your student brought home today.  Just in case you are getting frustrated the arrows below will help you find the different ways to fold each shape.  Did you find all of the choices for each shape?  Were there shapes that challenged you?

communities

I have a bit of work left before my communities booklet is ready!  Do you know which type of community I am missing?  It is the one that is the most fun to say when we use our body language to discribe the 3 communities.  

Urban communities are done by putting both arms straight up next to your head and making yourself into a skyscraper.

Suburban communities are displayed by making your arms into the roof of a house above your head.

Which one is missing?

Polite Pig

We have a pig in the second grade classroom.  He keeps us calm when we are faced with the idea of adding using the number 9.  This pig reminds us that adding the number 9 on to any number is truly not scary or frightening.   Mr. Nine Pig is polite and kind.  Let me introduce you!

When the students are faced with adding 9 to another number they think of him and calmly think it through.  It seems as though we have a very polite pig.  He only takes one bite away from the other number and he does put the bite right into the sum (the answer).

If you have 9 + 4 our polite pig would take a bite away from the 4 to make it a 3.  Then our nice pig would put that One Bite next to the number making the sum 13.  9 + 4 = 13.  Isn't our pig helpful!

  

This pig also doesn't seem to mind if he is the first number or not.  Your student are bringing home a sheet that will show you how well our Nine Pig minds his manners and he even lets other numbers be the first numbers you see.  4 + 9 = 13.

Oceans

The students are growing in knowledge and skills every day!  One of the areas that shows this great accomplishment is their manipulation of artistic medium to render a masterpiece.  Don't panic that is just a fancy way of saying the students use many kinds of items to create their own picture.   They have each constructed fish, an ocean, and air bubbles.  Students worked with crayon, watercolor paints, paper, and yarn.  There was also the ever popular usage of glue! They worked on the skills of painting, cutting, weaving, and sticking it together!

We have an ocean outside of our classroom in the hallway above our coat hooks and it is beautiful!

Socks!

The students received the first of their September rewards.  They will be bringing their dog bone charts home this week with a summary of how rewards are given.  October gives everyone a new chart and new incentives.  This month we will fill our charts with apple stickers.

Second graders also decided to celebrate having all of the large dog bones in the dish by having a sock day.  You might remember the empty Clifford size dog dish on the back bulletin board.  It is overflowing now!  Each bone represents a moment when our class was recognized for good volume or for being prepared!  We enjoyed wearing our socks today.  I wonder what they will choose for their next reward.

September AR Rewards will also be sent home this week.  The students get money for the school store as they accumulate points.  We have Pay Days just like our parents.  Second graders also earn incentives based on the amount of reading and testing they have successfully completed each month.