Busy little bees in 2nd grade!

We had a bundle of unique and interesting learning experiences this week! 

Continue scrolling to find out more about them!

Kate brought in her nutcracker collection for the LMC. I had never seen so many different styles of nutcrackers! Thanks so much for sharing them with us, Kate!

We enjoyed another learning experience related to our 1book, 1Dryden reading initiative in the LMC this week! We looked through an additional book of Henry Cole, called Spot the Cat. This happened to be a wordless book. The children were eager to look at each picture and come up with their own version of the story.  We are eagerly awaiting our visit from Henry Cole to Dryden next month!  Thank you for spending such quality time reading A Nest for Celeste with your children at home. We had some really in-depth discussions of our reading in class this week, and I was amazed at the children's interest, engagement, and understanding!

The children practiced "turning and talking" with their classroom partners as we delved deeper into the world of fiction during our reading lessons this week. The children are learning that there are 3 types of fiction: traditional fiction, fantasy fiction, and realistic fiction. We were carefully analyzing the texts we were reading this week to find elements of fiction that helped us determine exactly which type of fiction we are reading.

During writing, we continue to work on our fairy tales. As we read more and more fairy tales during our reading lessons, we come up with more and more ideas that we want to include in our own writing! The children are working to select interesting and specific words, include dialogue between characters, and of course follow the fiction format: beginning (introduce characters & setting) middle (describe the problem and events that happen in the story) and end (explain how the problem was resolved).

During science, we continue to explore solids, liquids, and gases. In these pictures, the children were challenged to build a structure using 15 pieces. They drew their structure, and then they drew a structure of their neighbor. We realized that objects can often be constructed of smaller pieces that can be moved or used or connected in multiple ways. No two structures in our class looked the same!

A word study lesson this week involved possessives. We learned that when someone owns something in a sentence, we will use 's to show this ownership!

A Celeste sighting! She was "hanging out" outside the gym doors! :)

A highlight of the week was "Breakout Edu."  During this learning experience, the children worked in small groups to work collaboratively to crack a series of codes. These codes were cracked with both creative and critical thinking.  Once the children believed they solved the puzzle, they raced over to the corresponding locked box and attempted their code on the lock.  The children learned to communicate and collaborate during this time! Skipping steps or guessing often put several teams further behind.  It was terrific to see the children's wheels turning and the teamwork kick in!

Another science lesson this week led us on a tour of the building where we hunted for various solids, liquids, and gases. Before we went on our adventure around the building, we worked to define each of these terms and come up with a few examples of each one.  We found that there were several materials that fit into the "mixture" or "unknown" categories, including fire extinguisher foam, shaving cream, air freshener in an aerosol can, and vaseline! I was very impressed by the critical thinking that the children showed as they considered the definitions we came up with, and compared them to the items we encountered in order to carefully and accurately classify them based on their properties.

It was Gianluca's week to shine! He had a terrific star student week. We enjoyed sharing a story and an experiment with his mom and dad in our classroom. We are so fortunate to have such a sweet, considerate, and bright boy in our class this year!