Field Trip and Shark Research

Finishing our shark research project Mikey and Will making posters to tell us all about sharks
Hard workers

A looooong snake!

Tyler looks a little nervous about that snake touching him

Mackenzine is holding a huge frog

This group looks at a pirhana

The boys answering questions about snakes

The students are learning about arthropods. They were disappointed that they didn't get to touch the tarantula, unfortunately someone had dropped her the day before.

This week we went on a field trip! The students got to visit Shawnee Mission East High School where they conducted their annual animal lab. Students from the high school spend all year learning about different types of animals and then get to show off their knowledge and all of the animals to elementary school kids. It makes a great field trip. The kids got to touch lizards, snakes, turtles, bunnies, mice, and much more! This week we also did a research project on sharks. The students will be conducting their own research project for the remainder of the school year and we did one together this week so that they could get a feel for what the project woule entail. As the school year comes to a close we will get to do many other fun projects so keep watching!

Busy Busy

We have been tremedously busy this week! Since it was a short week we had to cram a lot of stuff into it which makes for a jam packed week before Spring Break. This week we began cursive!! We practiced the letters i, u, and t! We will be attempting a letter a day before we work on joining them all together. We moved on to studying matter in Science. We did an experiment mixing oil and water. The students learned that when you mix oil and water, the oil floats on top! We've also talked about the 3 states of matter; solids, liquids, and gases. In Math we continued to work on 2-digit subtraction and money. Those are two areas we are still struggling in and will continue to work on throughout the remainder of the school year. This week something sad is happening. It is Mikey's last day at Southeast. He will be moving over to Hawthorne for the rest of 2nd grade. We will miss him terribly. Mikey brings so much joy and energy into our classroom!! Mikey with one of his best friends Tyler
Will and Leta are playing collect a $1.00

Tyler and Jake are practicing counting money by playing collect $1.00

Arianna drew a picture of our Science experiment.

Andrea is filling out her sheet and following the Scientific Method

The oil floated on top of the water

Brandon is adding the oil to our water

Leta adds food coloring to the water so that we can see the different parts of our mixture

We are getting ready to start the experiment

We asked a question that we wanted answered

Will is practicing his cursive writing

Musical!

We have been so busy the past few weeks that I haven't had much time to post new things!! Last week we had a really exciting event....OUR MUSICAL!!! After practicing for a long time we got to perform our musical twice. Once for the whole school and once at night for our families. Both of the performances went wonderful and I was so proud of each and every one of them! The past two weeks have also seen the end of the 3rd quarter. We reviewed all of our Math topics such as two digit addition and subtraction, money, and patterns. We finished up studying about the Earth's crust in Science and in Comm Arts we worked on inferences. We also wrote letters to our parents asking them for a special pet. The letters were some of the best writing pieces I have seen all year, and very convincing!!! I can't believe that the 4th quarter has already begun and the school year is coming to a close. Stay tuned for more exciting things in our classroom! Jake is ready for the musical!
Mikey was a great bug!

Mackenzie and Maddie have been friends since before Kindergarten!!

Makayla, Leta, and Andrea make beautiful bugs!

Sungin the cook with her family before the performance.

Rock Observations, Watchdogs, Book Nook, and MORE!

We had an exciting week last week!! We are still studying the Earth's Crust in Science and we continued our observations. This week we were observing rocks. We looked at our rocks size, shape, texture, and luster. There were many interesting rocks and we found out that rocks are all unique and different. We also had our first watchdog this week! Southeast began a program called Watchdogs. It is a dad that comes and volunteers for an entire day at Southeast!! They help kids in the classrooms, eat lunch in the cafeteria, and even go out to recess. We had a watchdog come and practice money with some kids and read with another student. It was great, any dads that want to volunteer please email me and I can get you signed up, the students LOVED having him there. We have also been really practicing our independent reading skills. Our class is up to reading 35 straight minutes by ourselves. We are working hard to get to 45 by the end of the school year! It was an exciting week.

Leta is working hard during Book Nook time

Our watchdog said Mikey must have been born reading!
Makyala is using her sense of sight to observe her rock

Jake had a very interesting blue rock that he got to observe

The magnifying glass was very helpful to Arianna while she looked at her rock up close!

Sungin worked hard to examine her rock for color and shape

Comparing Soils

We are learning all about the earth's crust in Science this week. We have talked about natural resources and how we use the earth's resources in our lives. We also talked about different types of soils. After discussing sand, loam, and clay; we got a chance to obeserve these types of soils using our sense of sight, hearing, touch, and smelling. We poured the soils on plates and used a magnifying glass to get a closer look at the soils. We also added water to each soil to see what would happen. Here is what we found out: Sand is kind of gritty, beige or tan colored, it holds a lot of water, and the grains slip through your fingers. Loam is black, made of lots of grains, and is good for planting. Clay is reddish brown, feels smooth, does not hold water, and would not be good for planting things. This week we are going to observe rocks. We are also going to learn about weathering and erosion. Science has been exciting this week!!

Welcome to our blog

I decided to create a blog for our classroom! I thought it would be a great way to keep all of the parents updated on the happenings of our day to day classroom activities. My goal is to update it once a week but that is just a goal for the time being. I would also like to let the students add things to the blog from time to time. Anytime parents want to bring in special pictures of an accomplishment their child has had I can scan them and then your student can actually write about their own pictures. I think this will also get the kids excited about what we are learning if they know it will be shared with others.