Fun and silly pictures!

Second grade is cooking up something good!

Second grade made hamburger book reports to share the stories they read in their literacy groups. We discussed how books are much like hamburgers. A hamburger has many important parts to make it taste yummy. The students discussed what they liked on a hamburger and were really excited to share. I explained that just like a hamburger, a book has to have all the important parts to make it good. We shared each story element on an ingredient of a hamburger and even shared our favorite part. The book reports turned out great and went home before Easter break! Great job, second grade!

Updates of what we did before spring break :)

The month of march brought a lot of green into our room. We did some fun activities to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. We talked about St. Patrick and read a story to honor him. Ava's family sent in yummy cupcakes which turned the kids mouths green. They especially loved that!!! We made our beautiful shamrocks and wrote acrostic poems. For math, each student received a pocket of change to count. Once they counted their change, they illustrated the coins and created a cute pot of gold where their money was displayed. Second grade was a great help with first grade on counting coins. It has been such a blessing to see the students my class help and support each other.














Before we went on spring break, first and second grade prepared for Holy Week. We created palm branches from torn paper, made books to show the stations of the cross, and learned about the three Holy Days. 

We also had the visiting team for accreditation visit our classrooms the last week before break. The visiting team left me many comments on how well behaved, engaged, and liked many of the ways I teach our combined class. We were all very proud!

Holding her teams tower so it doesn't fall

The only standing tower

During the last week of March, first and second grade participated in a thrilling marshmallow challenge. In this challenge, the students had to design a tower using only a meter of tape, 20 spaghetti noodles, and 1 marshmallow. The students had 12 minutes to design a plan and 18 minutes to build. The challenge was to build the tallest tower with a marshmallow on top. Out of 5 towers only 1 stood tall and standing after the timer went off. As a class, we reflected on why the towers didn't stand and what we would do next time to make it stronger. Many realized that teamwork was key in designing and building. The class had a blast being little engineers! We are going to repeat this challenge again to see if we can successfully carryout our plans. I took a fun video of the kids as they were in the building process.

Standing 17 inches tall

March was a fun filled month of learning! 

Marching to Easter

The month of march has flown by! Once again, a lot has been happening in the WILD first and second grade.

This month we worked on the writing process and wrote a fairytale. We discussed all the important parts that a story should include and we even had a real princess come to our class to read a fairytale to us. Miss Thurston County 2013, Alicia came to our class and read us a fun story. We decided to write our own fairytales about a princess, Princess Alicia to be exact. The stories turned out great. The class used such vivid details in their stories and their imaginations. We will be making a book for Alicia of all the stories.

We had our auction this month too. First grade made the wonders of Tacoma on a canvas. Each class painted a building in Tacoma on newspaper print. We even put ourselves, school, and church on the canvas. Second grade made a beautiful tile tray. Each student decorated an angel tile and they were put together to make a serving tray.

Second grade did their first literature groups. Each student was responsible for daily readings, vocabulary, summaries, and illustrating a picture of what happened in their readings. After each student was complete with their daily reading work, they met in a literature group. In these groups, each student had a job. One student was in charge of summarizing the chapter, another was in charge of being the vocabulary finder, the next student was in charge of asking questions about the story for their group, and the last student was the leader of the group and making sure each student fulfilled their duties. Once they finished their books, they did a fun book report. We talked about the important parts of a book and how they must all be there to make it a good story. We then compared books to cheeseburgers and discussed all the important fixings that make them good. The second grade made their book reports into a cheeseburger. They turned out great and are displayed on our classroom bulletin board.

First grade made fun shamrocks to show the Holy Trinity. All three parts of the shamrock were hearts that were labeled Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The first graders illustrated pictures on their hearts of their shamrock that matched each part.

This is a snip-it of what we have done so far this month. More WILD information and pictures to come soon :)

All you need is paint swatches....who would have thought?

In first grade we work really hard on reading word families. I found this fun idea on Pinterest and thought I'd share. We are going to start using these paint swatch word family cards in our reading stations and for a finish work activity. Easy to make and fun to learn with.

We can count 100 days!

We celebrated our 100th day on February 7th. We started the day out by doing fun 100 second activities. The class had 100 seconds to write as many as they could of the following things: first name, last name, spelling words, and writing numbers in numerical order. The class also had 100 seconds to do the following physical activities: jumping jacks, jumping on left foot, and jumping on right foot. We also timed ourselves doing math facts for 100 seconds. Oh, my did our hands hurt by the time we were done writing and our bodies were exhausted after all the jumping. We pre-warned our eighth grade buddies before we jumped around because their classroom is below ours.



Students also brought 100 items with them to school. These items ranged from cereal, beans, popcorn,vsequins, candy, nails, and anything else we could find around our homes. We used these items to count to 100 in various ways. We first counted by ones, then fives, and then tens. Once we finished, we used our 100 items to make a picture. Below are some fun pictures of what the students made with their 100 items. We then had an art display in the cafeteria with kindergarten for the whole school to see. The kids loved sharing their display of 100 art.

Catholic School's Week

This week was Catholic School's Week. We had a terrific week with many fun things planned for the students. On Monday, all staff members brought baby photos. The students had the week to look at the pictures and guess who each teacher's baby photo. At the end of the week, winners were announced on who got them all correct.

On Tuesday, we thanked our families for sending us to Visitation Catholic School. My class wrote a letter to their family. Each student wrote what they like about their school, what they like to learn about, their favorite thing to do at school, and thanked their families for sending them to our wonderful school. We also made beautiful glass magnets with our photos in them.

On Wednesday, we had a special friends lunch. Earlier in the week we made an invitation for a special friend. We learned how to make an invitation and what important things that need to be included. Students invited their parents, friends, cousins, and grandparents. On our special friends lunch day we had cold lunch in our classroom with the people we invited. One student invited his guitar teacher and he came to visit and have lunch.

On Thursday, we had student appreciation day. Students brought boardgames from home to play during our game hour. Every class in the school played old fashion board games. Twister was a class favorite. After we played board games, we had an all school recess. We were able to play with all the kids and teachers even joined in on the fun! We also celebrated Niyah's birthday at the end of the day. Her mom brought in yummy cupcakes to share with the class. We love to celebrate birthdays!

On Friday, we celebrated teachers. We had a yummy lunch provided by the school. 

It was a fantastic week!