First Day Jitters

Who isn't nervous the first day of school??? Even the teachers are nervous!!! On our first day, we read "First Day Jitters" by Julie Danneberg. It was such a fun story! After we read the story, we completed a worksheet and drank Jitter Juice. It was delicious and calmed our nerves completely! We love being in 2nd Grade and are now ready for a fun year of learning! :) 

Back to School!!!

The time is here for the 2015-2016 school year!!! I could not be more excited to meet our new class and begin another year of fun and learning!! J This year, Open House will be Thursday, August 20th from 5:30-6:15 PM for Second Grade. Make sure to bring school supplies with you so you don't have to carry them on the first day of school! Here are a few tips when it comes to supplies:

• DO NOT LABEL- Liquid Glue Bottle, tissues, construction paper, notebook paper (This will be community property.)
• Your folders do not have to have brads – don’t worry about it if you couldn’t find any.
• Please make sure you DO LABEL – folders, notebooks, pencil boxes, glue sticks
• Bring a few extra dollars with you to purchase an agenda in the Cafeteria at Open House. They will be sold for $7. Other items will also be available for sale that night.

Parents, please, please, PLEASE take the time to click on and submit the following link!

http://bit.ly/1UQJRIF

This Google form contains important questions regarding the first day of school, student privacy, and parent contact information. It will save you a lot of time to fill it out before coming to open house on Thursday night. I am so very excited to meet everyone and have a wonderful school year together!!! 

SEE YOU SOON!!!! J

-Mrs. Story

Fun in the Forest

We have FUN IN THE FOREST!!!!!

(AKA Field Day)

Dizzy Bat

Water balloon toss

Water balloon toss

Water balloon toss

Water balloon toss

Tug A War

The face of a kid who just dunked his teacher :)

What kid doesn't want to dunk their teacher? ;)

Another dunk :)

Class-20+, Mrs. Story-0

Good News! Author Jeff Mack Visit

Author and Illustrator Jeff Mack came to visit our school yesterday to teach us all about his career and how he became successful. We learned so much from him! He taught us that it takes practice, practice, and more PRACTICE to be great, that you have to be brave and persevere in trying to publish a book, and that you can take simple ideas and make them fun! We had a great time learning from him, hearing him read some of his stories to us, and teaching us how to draw Clueless McGee from one of the series he wrote and illustrated! If you're interested in learning more about him or purchasing one of his books, check out his website: www.jeffmack.com. Here are a few pictures from his visit...

Indoor Recess

Do you ever have those days where its cold or rainy and you're stuck inside even during recess? Not to worry! Try introducing your class to the Hopscotch app where they can program their own games and trade with each other to play to pass the time while inside. The kids LOVE sharing their creativity and programming abilities with each other. Not only are they proud of their work, but they really enjoy having a good time with their friends. Here is a video of a few kiddos in our class playing a 2-player game programmed by one of our own classmates:

If you're interested in learning how to program using Hopscotch, click on this video tutorial to get started. There are a ton of tutorials to choose from!

Happy programming! :)

Learning How to Vote

At the end of our extensive Government unit, we decided the best way to help the information stick and to encourage students to get involved in our city, state, and federal governments through voting was to actually go through the steps ourselves. After many lessons on how government affects us and the way that the government runs, our class had a firm understanding that it is important to vote to elect the people we trust to make the best decisions. While knowing there are several steps to the process, we acted it out in hopes that we would understand the order of the voting process even better. Each student registered to vote by filling out a blue voter registration card, then received a voting ballot if they met all of the qualifications. After receiving a voting ballot, the students would wait in line to cast their vote in one of our top secret voting booths. Each student was educated on the options listed on the ballot and what they entailed prior to receiving their ballot. At the end, I counted each vote and announced the winner for our class. I then shared our results with the other 2nd grade teachers so we could determine which choice had the most votes and would win for our grade level. As it turned out, majority ruled....INDOOR RECESS!

Voting Booth

One School, One Book

Our school participated in the One School, One Book program again this year by reading "Stuart Little" by E.B. White. Hidden Forest enjoys participating in this program because "having a common experience builds community strength and cohesiveness!" Teachers and students are given the same reading schedules to follow with their families each night. As a bonus this year, we even had Stuart come to our school! Stuart spent most of his time in the library, but he still managed to make his way around the school to visit classrooms for various reasons. Our class is currently studying the basic needs of animals in Science. Stuart visited our classroom so we could observe how his environment meets his basic needs. We had so much fun observing him! We enjoyed being able to tie our book into our science lesson!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

We have spent quite a bit of our time researching ways to conserve our natural resources by practicing the R's (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle) the past few weeks and have learned many ways to help our environment! As part of our research we:

-Interviewed a recycling expert, Mr. Walter, who is one of the custodians at our school
-Read books with interesting facts about the 3 R's and what happens if we do not practice them
-Listened to and watched videos to gather more information
-Scanned QR codes that were put on objects to sort items into 2 groups: 1. Items that can be recycled and 2. Items that cannot be recycled
-Used a Venn Diagram made out of hula hoops to sort items that could be reduced, reused, or recycled, or a combination of any of those methods
-Made a Reusable Craft (Something that is functional and serves a purpose and was made of materials that were placed in the recycling bin)
-Took pictures that represented each of the 3 R's and organized a slideshow using the 30 Hands App to share some of the things we learned in our research
-Shared our presentations with our classmates

If you are interested in conserving our Earth's natural resources, watch one (or all) of the presentation videos below to learn how!

Presentation 1

Presentation 2

Presentation 3

Presentation 4

Here are a few pictures of our research experience:

Interviewing Mr. Walter

Interviewing Mr. Walter

Hula Hoop Venn Diagram

Using QR codes to sort things by recyclable and non-recyclable materials

Books will ALWAYS be great resources!

Taking notes on videos we watched

Looking at our lunches to see what we can reduce, reuse, or recycle

SEA WORLD Field Trip!

Last Friday we had a blast going on a behind the scenes tour of Sea World for our field trip! Not only did we get to see and learn about amazing animals such as dolphins, sharks, stingrays, Beluga whales, and more, but we actually got to TOUCH Spotted Bamboo Sharks and stingrays!!! It was so cool! The shark's back was really rough but the stingray's back felt really slimy. We learned that the stingray's back was so slimy because the top of it is covered in a layer of mucus. Gross! We also learned:

-Not all whales are dolphins, but all dolphins are whales.

-A dolphin's tail fin moves up and down when it swims but a shark's tail fin moves from side to side when it swims.

-The Spotted Bamboo Shark's back is as hard as a tooth.

-Some dolphins can jump up to 25 feet in the air!

Here are a few pictures and a short video from our fun-filled day. :)

Area Robots

Math is the favorite subject for many kiddos in our class. Last week we ended our Measurement Unit by learning about area. To understand that area measures things in squares that fill the entire inside of a closed shape, we designed robots on grid paper. After we designed our robots, we found the area of our robot's head, arms, body, and legs, then added them together to find the total area of our robot. This made learning about area fun even for our friends whose favorite subject isn't Math! 

Who let the cat out of the bag?

We are always learning new techniques in our writing and practice improving our skills each day, but the one thing that is never new to us is writing nice things to our friends! Recently, we did an activity called "Who Let the Cat out of the Bag?" to send SUPER SECRET letters to our classmates. Each of us drew a name of one of our classmates from a bag and wrote an anonymous letter to them to let them know how great of a leader they are and why we like being in the same class as them. We had to "let the cat out of the bag" and let them know that their leadership skills are not a secret and other people notice them! After we were done writing our letters, we snuck them over to Mrs. Story's desk and she delivered them at the end of the day. We still have no idea who said such nice things to us, but it definitely made us happy and feel good about ourselves! Mrs. Story even CRIED while she was reading the letters we wrote to each other. :)

Oh, the places we'll go...

During Dr. Suess week we did SEVERAL activities to encourage reading throughout our school. We had different ways to dress up each day which made it even more fun! One of the activities we did in 2nd Grade turned out so well that it was put on display in the hallway. We read the book "Oh, The Places You'll Go!" by Dr. Suess and then thought about the places we actually want to go in our lives and the different things we want to accomplish throughout the years. We wrote each of the different places/things we thought of on arrows to represent the many directions we will go in life and then wrote a paper describing these different places we want to go and how we will get there. The 2nd Grade teachers know that we will do great things both now and in the future and can't wait to see us work hard to reach these goals and get to these amazing places! Here are a few pictures of our work on display: