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. :)