These 2nd graders covered so much this week!
1) We started our unit on Citizenship! The children each received a President to research in the LMC. We are going to create a "Hall of Presidents" with the other 2nd grade classes to learn all about our great American leaders!
2) Thank you for helping your child choose an interesting US landmark to study for their first home learning project of the year, too! We are starting to feel a fun patriotic buzz in our classroom as we delve further into our unit!
3) The Arlington Heights Book Mobile stopped by to show the kids how it is a valuable and fun extension of our public library! The children enjoyed looking through the shelves and choosing some books to bring home. (Several kids found books about their landmarks and presidents! Hooray! :)
4) We had a wonderful time on our field trip to the Police Department this morning! Thanks to Mrs. Droste, Mrs. Otahal, Mrs. Stevenson, Mr. Sheehan, and Mrs. Morton for coming along with us on this beautiful fall day. The children were amazing listeners and asked very thought provoking questions! They showed STELLAR field trip behavior! I was so proud!
Here we are in the library for an extended research time this week. The children received the name of the president they will study. Using the app "PebbleGo," they started reading, listening, learning, and writing down some interesting facts!
We covered a couple of big concepts in math this week! During this lesson, the children counted how many pockets they each had. After jotting down our number on a post-it note, we sorted our data from the least number of pockets to the most by making a line through the center of our classroom. Then the kids sat down from both ends of our line until we found the median, or average number of pockets for our class!
(You might notice our adorable Thanksgiving turkeys hanging overhead! The kids loved making those this week, too! :)
Our median number of pockets was 2 1/2! We had two students left, Emma had 2 pockets, and Ryan had 3, causing us to find the number in between! One additional skill we worked on this week was making change. We practiced buying objects less than $1.00 and COUNTING UP to figure out how much our change would be. We started by adding the coins we needed to get to a nice "easy to add" number that ended with 5 or 0. Then we added quarters, dimes and nickels until we go to $1.00! It will take some practice to get comfortable with this concept, but we have already made a lot of progress.
The book mobile had perfect timing as we embark on our citizenship unit! The children and I had just begun talking about what "government" is, and what services the government provides for us. We also learned the words tax, vote, and patriotism this week!
The children were so excited to be on the book mobile. They looked through the shelves and had so much fun showing each other the books they were finding.
Samantha found a book about the Presidents!
Ryan found a book about his President, Thomas Jefferson!
Maggie found one about Abraham Lincoln!
Frankie found a "good fit" book for him. I love that he opened the book and tested out a few pages to see if it fit- and it did!
Joana found a book about Bulgaria- where some of her relatives live!
Curtis was so happy to find a book full of "icky" facts!
Meg found a book full of random but interesting facts about the Presidents!
Look at my eager readers- they couldn't wait to get started!
Thank you, Arlington Heights Book Mobile! We'll look for you in the neighborhood!
As I mentioned, the children are learning about the government and its leaders. We will be talking about the leaders of our city, state, and our country. Here, the kids are gluing down the steps of the election process. We are going to have a mock class election in the upcoming weeks to imitate this process.
Emma was our super star student this week! Thanks to Mrs. Barber for coming in to visit with us and to help Emma with her experiment. Emma showed us how the primary colors mix to make the secondary colors! They even passed out primary colored plastic disks so the kids could try it themselves!
Our class tree went from pretty red leaves to NO leaves! Fall is here!
We had a terrific day on Friday for our walk to the Police Department! The children were excellent listeners and learned so much about this important service in our community. I was so proud of them!
We passed the Fire Department on our way! Another important service in our town that keeps our community healthy and safe!
Officer Veenstra showed us the camera used to take photos.
He explained how fingerprints are scanned right into the computer and we learned that no two fingerprints are alike!
He showed us how years ago, fingerprints were taken using ink and paper
We felt what it was like to be locked in a holding cell for a few minutes.
We viewed the jail cells where prisoners are kept until the judge can hear their case.
We took a look around the police officers' workout room!
We saw the evidence lockers where important evidence is protected.
We learned how the shooting range works!
We took a look around the garage outside where the police bicycles and motorcycles are kept.
And finally, we took a photo with Officer Veenstra in front of a police vehicle. What a great field trip!
Thanks again to our parent volunteers, Mrs. Droste, Mrs. Otahal, Mrs. Stevenson, Mr. Sheehan, and Mrs. Morton, who helped us stay safe and stay together during our excursion! We had so much fun and were so glad you could come with us!
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