Happy Thanksgiving!

    I hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving with family and friends.  Before we know it Christmas will be upon us!  We were so thrilled to have the mother of one of our students come in to talk to us about her heritage.  We have been learning about the Pilgrims and Native Americans so it was wonderful that she came in to tell us stories, show us a dance, introduce us to aspects of her heritage.

Here Mrs. N ( I don't use names in my blog) shows us a Native American doll and tells us a story about why the doll does not have a face.

This is an example of a bowl made by Native Americans from the West.

More Native American items.

Mrs. N showed us how to do a Smoke Dance and some of us even tried it.

We made Friendship Snacks for people who use the Outreach Center.

We packaged them and added a note wishing our friends a Happy Thanksgiving.

We enjoyed our own feast together of leftover Friendship Snack, corn muffins and butter that we made ourselves in the classroom.

What a busy week we had and December promises to be just as busy.  We will continue to celebrate Advent together and remember the meaning of Christmas.  
If you check the reading study guides for the next unit you will notice that we only have two reading tests in December.  We spend more time on SS in December because we learn about Christmas traditions around the world.  We are looking forward to getting together with Miss Agostini's class to learn about 6 different countries and their Christmas traditions. 

Past and Present

   This is my favorite time of the year.  I love to hear stories about Pilgrim life and talk about our traditions.  My daughter was supposed to come in to give a demonstration on turning raw fiber into usable yarn for creating clothing; similar to what they did in Colonial times.  Unfortunately she was snowed in. Fortunately she had already given me all of her materials so I was able to show the students. 

We start with raw fiber.  This is wool but we also got to feel and see flax and cotton.

The students got to try their hand at carding the wool.  This makes it nice and fluffy with the fiber all going in the same direction.

We took the roving and used a drop spindle to form it into yarn.  This was much harder than it looks  and the students were surprised to learn that Colonial children often had this job to do in the home.

The finished yarn can be woven or knitted to make something usable for wearing.  I think the students got the idea that making clothing was a much longer process back then than it is today.

We sent a nice thank you note to Mr. Mattar for giving us a pizza party, coloring books, and crayons.

Our Fun Friday centers included an addition/subtraction game, "Pop".

We also used ipads to improve our math and language arts skills.

At the Listening Center we read Frog and Toad All Year from our author of the month, Arnold Lobel.

We also decorated Christmas cards to send to a veterans' hospital.  The students wrote words like, "Thank you for serving our country" and "You are a hero". 

Here is the photo that is going on our published book, Traditions.  I am sending the book to the publishers this weekend- we are so excited!
The students will be happy to know that there are no vocabulary or spelling words to study this week.  Since it is a short week we will not have a reading test.  We will fill our days with performing the plays, getting ready for Advent, making corn muffins and butter, learning more about Colonial Times and Native Americans, subtracting double digits, etc.  I don't think we will miss the reading series!

 Other lessons:
Reading: We used baseball stories to learn about how to draw conclusions.  We also practiced our fluency with our Thanksgiving plays.  We are putting these plays on for other students.  Parents will be invited to our big, end of the year plays.
Math: We are getting really good at adding columns of double digit numbers.  Next week we will start subtracting with regrouping.  We also worked on writing numbers in expanded form. Ex: 45= 40+5
SS: We received more emails from our fictional Pilgrim and Native American friends.  We also viewed some clips about the Mayflower and Plymouth Colony. http://www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids/thanksgiving-virtual-field-trip
Religion: We talked about sharing the gifts God has given us and Pentacost
Important Dates: 11/25- Native American Dance presentation with Mrs. Nash
11/26- Mass 9:40-10:30 

Buckle Up!

Today we enjoyed our pizza party courtesy of William Mattar.  Our class pledged to buckle up when in a moving vehicle and we were selected to win a pizza party!

What creative families we have!  Every year I am amazed by the items chosen to adorn these pictures.  Thank you for working on them, I hope they were a fun family project.

Locker Art: Ripped paper cornucopias

 Other lessons included:
Math- Double digit addition with regrouping
Reading- drawing conclusions from our reading
Writing- using a graphic organizer to begin our persuasive writing
SS- Colonial life- we signed up to receive email letters from a fictional pilgrim girl and Native American boy; we also learned about Veteran's Day
Religion- the sacrifice of Jesus

11/21- Mr. Will's Thanksgiving feast available in lunch room- it's delicious!

We're Sticking Together!

We had a very busy week but the highlight came with today's Fun Friday centers.  After teaching us a little about magnets, Mrs. Parfinski had the students experiment with the magnets by themselves and record their findings.

Here we worked with bar magnets to show attraction and repulsion.  After recording the findings we used the magnetic train cars to demonstrate attraction and repulsion.

We are experimenting to find which things are attracted to magnets.

We are learning about magnetic fields.

We are learning that magnets can attract even through a liquid.

Does anyone else have fond memories of this childhood game?  You use the wand magnet to pull the metal shavings up onto the face and head.

Another fun activity this week was casting our ballots on Election Day.  The students voted for a choice of lunch and whether they thought yogurt should be the official NYS snack.  Pizza was chosen for lunch by a wide margin and can be purchased for lunch the day before Thanksgiving break (11/26).  The vote for yogurt was a little closer but the "nays" had it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Speaking of pizza, our class won a free pizza party from the office of William Mattar!  All we had to do was to take a pledge to always wear our seat belts when traveling in a motor vehicle.  Our pizza will be lunch on Friday (11/14) so you won't need to pack/buy lunch.  Please remember to bring a snack, however.  Thank you William Mattar!

 Other lessons included:
Reading- sequencing a story, homophones, finishing our tradition writing (it's almost ready to go to press), and working with our pre-K buddies
Math- adding with regrouping and mental math strategies
Science- magnets and nocturnal animals
SS- Native Americans
Religion- Christ's death on the cross
Important Dates: 
Monday, 11/10- last day to order our class book
11/11- Veteran's Day- no school
11/13- picture retakes
11/14 - Game Club (students may bring in a game from home) and pizza for lunch
 

Happy Halloween!

We were all very excited to celebrate Halloween together.  First we did reverse Trick-or-Treating were we walked around and put candy in everyone's bag.  Then  we enjoyed some Halloween baked goods while we read the Star Student's book and a Halloween poem.  Last, we played a Halloween game.  Thank you to the parents who helped out.  I hope everyone had a fun, safe Halloween.

This is one of the centers we did for Fun Friday.

We all made campaign posters for Election Day.  We will be voting on which school lunch we want for the day before Thanksgiving recess.  The school will also decide whether they agree with the decision that the new, official NYS snack should be yogurt. 

These are the two choices for lunch- pizza and pancakes.

Locker Art- we did leave rubbings and a descriptive Fall poem using our 5 senses.

Our first Game Club was a success!  All of the 2nd grade girls went to Miss Agostini's room and the boys came to our room.  It was nice to mix up the classes a bit.  I witnessed a lot of math and reading skills being practiced and it was also a good chance to practice good social skills.
Math: we worked on evens and odds and arrays.  
Language Arts: sequencing a story, letter punctuation, and plurals.
Religion: the life of Jesus starting with his birth
SS: rules and responsibilities for citizens
Important Dates:11/4 - Election Day and Pre-K reading buddies
                           11/5- Mass at 9:40

Have a great weekend!