I apologize in advance if you end up with a 7 or 8 year-old in your bed at night. We have been learning about money-identifying, spelling, counting, adding, and some even finding change for money amounts. And, we even found that the Googies will pay money to buy little children. On Friday we read the poem by Shel Silverstein and found how much it would cost to buy certain combinations of children. We left the day trying to find out how much it would cost to buy one of each kind of child. Our answers were varied and while some strategies were shared, we did not agree on one answer. The challenge remains, how much would a googie have to pay for one of each child. Any student that does the math and brings the correct answer to school (along with the work to show the answer), will receive a "surprise" from me. We were however, able to draw the conclusion that in this particular case, it pays to be bad!
We had a fun ending to our week. We celebrated Theodore Geisel's birthday today. He wrote by the pen name Dr. Seuss. A HUGE thank you to Ms. Heidi for making some fun snacks for us to enjoy- Cat in the Hats (strawberry and banana skewers), Green Eggs and Ham (pretzels with a little melted white chocolate and a green M&M), Bar-ba-loots (chocolate Teddy Grahams), One Fish, Two Fish (goldfish crackers) and Lorax juice boxes (complete with a removable mustache). You had us all saying, "A fan I am!" Telling Time We have spent the week learning to tell time. Second graders are expected to know how to tell time to the five-minutes on an analog clock. They also need to understand a.m. and p.m. After an initial pre-test, I am impressed how much our kids have learned during this unit. Please work with your child on telling time. If you're like me, my phone is my digital time teller. Perhaps it's time to bring out some analog watches and practice, practice, practice! Today we made some fun Cat in the Hat clocks. I didn't get a picture of one to post here. It can be a fun practice clock to work on time at home. 
What do these pictures all have in common? Well, they're made out of 1-0-0 of course! We had a fun day back after a week break and yesterday marked the 100th day of school! We got to meet our new classmate MacKenzie and share with her the things that make our school a great place to be. Most of our day was filled with activities around 100. Most kids gave the day back 2-thumbs up! Check out the poster we created in the slideshow below and more of our 100 pictures (with writing) are hanging in the hallway and are getting posted to our Weebly sites. We will have one activity we will continue this week and that is 100 ACTS OF KINDNESS. Students are encouraged to think of ways to make someone else's day a bit cheerier. This could be a note, a pay-it-forward, bringing in a neighbor's garbage bin, doing a chore without being asked, etc. Please have this conversation with your child, do an act of kindness, and add that act to our classroom poster. We have a goal of doing 100 acts of kindness by the end of this week!  We've all had a little kangaroo in us lately! We've been busy using different tools to measure objects and distances and comparing those measurements using different units of measure. We are also estimating and making accurate measurements of objects and the distance we threw bean bags and jumps. Using the data we have used addition and subtraction to solve problems and made line graphs. Feel free to keep kangarooing at home. It could be fun for the whole family!  I hope you all got out in the snow over the weekend! Oh boy, what a busy week that lies ahead of us! I'd like to make sure we all know what's in store for the next four days. Valentines: Compliment cards are due this Wednesday. Please take the time to write neatly and to put thought into making compliments unique for the recipient. Party is on Friday at 2:30. Spelling: We have more "commonly misspelled words" to practice this week. Sentence writing and word lists went home today. Test Friday. Reading Log: We have a four-day reading log that went home today. Please have the students keep track of the log and parents please initial. Character Works: Performance is this Friday at 2:00 in the cafeteria. All second grades will be performing a Readers Theater and sing a song about QAE's five pillars. PLEASE let me know if your child will be absent or leaving early this week. All kids have a scheduled part in the performance and we need to plan for absences if there are any!  I am thrilled to share with you that I will be traveling to Zambia this summer! I have the opportunity to take part in the partnership QAE has with Dwankhozi Hope. I will be traveling with fellow teachers Mr. Bailey, Ms. Marks, and Ms. Yokoyama and with six wonderful Dwankhozi affiliates. Our trip will continue to build the partnership we have built with Dwankhozi Basic School and further the connections and learning we make from reaching out across cultures and continents. Before our departure, the staff will be collaborating to plan for our time there and we'll be making further preparations for our trip. Thank you for sharing the excitement and curiosity with me! I was really hoping to arrange an authentic and historical field trip to the Super Bowl Champions parade and celebrate our Seattle Seahawks! It is with great disappointment that I will not be joining my friends, family and many school families for this occasion. I hear that there's a 12th man fever going around (symptoms include turning green and blue and hoarsenss of the larynx). If you're caught with this sickness, make sure to throw on your thermals, get out in the brisk air and keep spreading the love along with thousands and thousands of others. Those of us well enough to make it to school will take part with live streaming and shelter from the cold. May we continue to learn from the perseverance, heart, and solidarity that has brought our region together. What a way to work, play and live! *There are countless educational experiences surrounding this victorious ocassion. Aside from the Boeing plane flying in a 12 formation over Washington I noticed that… We scored a safety within 12 second of the game. 12 seconds into the second half, Percy Harvin caught the ball on the 12-yard line for a kickoff return touchdown. I would love to hear other observations or high lights you have to share! Woopsies, the following blog post has been in my "drafts" folder. Of course it's not too late to enjoy a great performance by our kids! From January.... On Monday we observed Martin Luther King Jr day and last week we recognized his heroism at our all-school assembly. Mr. Elliott spoke about Isaac Newton's quote, "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants." Together, we can see further and do more, than we can acting alone. As we know, MLK brought incredible change, and he did it with the collaboration of others. It is enjoyable writing blogs and posting snapshots of our kids; the capable youth and giants of various sizes. Hopefully the words in this blog title look familiar… Spelling Words: Please be sure to study them at home as the test and sentences will be due on Thursday. We will have spelling tests about every other week. Reading of course should be part of your regular home routine, but there is not a BINGO sheet for the week. Spelling and the Valentines should be keeping things busy! I'd like to thank the class for a nice birthday celebration last Friday. It was fun to step into the celebrant's role of our classroom birthday tradition. With the earth in hand, I walked around the sun over 4x the amount that our 8 year-olds have done. They were a bit surprised that I kept going and going and I admit, I got pretty dizzy. It made my day to get acknowledgements from the class and to share my favorite treat, POPCORN, together! I am in search of about 3 volunteers who would be available to lead book club discussions. This would take place from about 10:00-10:30 on Wednesday-Friday starting next week and for the next two weeks. Please let me know if you're interested! Minds at Work. Here's what we've been up to:
Please remember that students do not have school this Friday and that us lucky teachers will have this place all to ourselves. :) With the creative help of Anna Colando (daughter of Ms. Colando), three students made a video that explains our learning about the global water crisis and to raise awareness around this issue. Abby, Chase, and Sadie represented all the second graders when making this film. Group PBL projects Our Voicethread projects are completed and are posted on the PBL tab of our class webpage as well on each child's Weebly (under PBL). Check them out and tell us what you think! It would be great to share your child's Weebly with family and friends and have them comment on their work. You can also download the Weebly app on your personal device and it will notify you when others comment on your blogs. | Email Notifications:
All parents/guardians of current 2013-14 year students in Ms. Leckie's class are automatically subscribed to this blog. AuthorNothing really goes away until it teaches us what we need to know. ArchivesJanuary 2014 Categories |
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