Back to School and Getting Busy

We have been back at school for 3 days now and have been busy, busy, busy!  We spend a lot of time working on learning procedures and how things are done in our classroom.  I know it gets boring and repetitious for the kids but it  makes our year run much  more smoothly in the long run!  We have also found time for some projects.  Our classroom is TEAM HEATH and so we made our team players.  On each jersey we wrote what it is we can do to help the team.  Every star athlete needs a trading card, so we completed those as well and hung them on our work display wall.  Take a look at all of our hard work.

Meet The Teacher

I'm so excited that I got to meet all 21 of my new team members at Meet the Teacher night!  I hope your parents got their homework done!!  I can't wait to see you guys tomorrow.  I know that we are going to have a fantastic year in 2nd grade!!

Love,

Mrs. Heath

Welcome to 2nd Grade and TEAM HEATH!!!

Welcome to 2nd Grade and TEAM HEATH!

Mr. and Mrs. Heath
July 2013

My name is Mrs. Heath and I'm thrilled that I get to be your teacher this year.  I hope that you are as excited for 2nd grade as I am!  I can't wait until Monday, August 12th for Meet the Teacher.  It will be exciting to see everyone.  Our class blog is a place for us to share what we do in our classroom with our families and friends, as well as provide a place to access important class information.  Please feel free to follow us via email and you will know when we post new content.  Students will each get the chance to write their own blog post as we go through the year.  I hope you check back often to see what we've been up to.  In the meantime, take a look at our pages (pages can be accessed by clicking the titles above, e.g. "All About Me") where you can find information about our class, including our daily schedule, book orders, and online resources for you to use at home.  Please take a few minutes to visit the All About Me page to see some pictures of MY family and see what we did over the summer.  Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

:o)  Love,  Mrs. Heath

Measuring

Students have fun experimenting with nonstandard units of measure --  using strings or pipecleaners we searched for items of the same length.  Mostly, I think they just had fun being silly!!

Ooblek

Not quite a solid...not quite a liquid...it is ooblek!! 

To wind up our solids and liquids unit we had some fun investigating ooblek.  Ooblek is a simple combination of cornstarch and water, with a bit of food coloring.  When you apply pressure to the mixture it acts as a solid.  You can roll it in a ball, shape it, or even walk on it (if you had enough!).  However, when you release the pressure it acts like a liquid and flows right through your hands. 

The kids LOVED playing in it and seeing how it would react.  A very BIG thank you to Mrs. Koehler for the pictures and for rescuing our ooblek from a recipe disaster caused by Mrs. Heath.  :)

Non-Fiction Writing

Our class has been working very  hard on learning about different types of non-fiction writing.  As part of this they have created several class books.

Our first class book was an All About 2nd Grade book.  After brainstorming all of the important parts of second grade, each child took a section and wrote about what was important to know about that subject or activity.

Our next class book was an ABC book - all about Hickory Hill.  It is currently residing in Mrs. Kunkle's office if you'd like to take a look at what we think is important about Hickory Hill.

Last we wrote a very special true or false book about our classmates.  You'll get to see that book when it comes home with your child at the end of the year!  You'll also get to see a special how to book that we wrote.  It is a surprise that is coming home next week!

This week students are working hard on researching their own subjects to write about.  We have everything from castles to fruit, Michael Jordan to Uranus, and many things in between!  You can help your child do research at home and print out pictures or graphics to include in their books.

Liquids and Solids

What happens to a solid when you put it in water?  That is a question we set out to discover the answer to.  We began by taking a variety of solids and placing them in a baggie.  Then we added water to the baggie.

  We waited overnight to see what would happen...

We found out that many different things can happen when you put a solid in water!  The water might change colors, the solid might grow, it might soften, it might fall apart, it might dissolve, or it might not change at all!

We then set the items out for the water to evaporate.  Some of the solids, like rice, beans, and raisins, returned back to the same as before we added water.  Others changed completely - our candy and our cookie both turned in to a sticky, goopy mess that we would NOT want to eat!!

You can continue this experiment at home by putting different solids into water and then seeing what happens!

 

 

Durham Museum

What a fantastic group of 2nd graders I had at the Durham Museum on Friday.  It makes me smile when I take my kiddos out in public and they absolutely SHINE!!

The students had the opportunity to rotate between 3 different sessions at the museum.  During the first session we learned all about Native Americans and how they prospered on the prairie.

 

From there we moved to the Buffet Grocery Store.  Our guide there had worked at the store as a teenager and told fantastic stories.  The students were very observant and asked great questions like why everything only cost a few cents then and now it costs us lots of dollars! 

 

Our final station was life on the prairie for pioneers.  The students were shocked at some of the chores that kids had to do ... (Empty chamber pots??  Pick up buffalo chips??)  At the end they all decided they'd rather life in the present vs the past.

 

 

As you can see - we had a great day!!

 

 

Solids and Liquids in Science

Oh, how we love science!  The touching, the manipulating, the questioning....Science ROCKS!!

Our current science unit is about solids and liquids.  As part of this unit we have done many things including identifying the characteristics and properties of each.  As a fun lesson, I gathered 24 different items (thanks to the families that helped!) and placed them out for the children to investigate.  Their job was to determine if each item was a solid or a liquid, using the properties that they had learned.  The students were able to identify many of the items correctly.  A few tricky ones - toothpaste, peanut butter, and jelly.  Hmmm....What do you think?  Solid or Liquid????

At the end of our experiments we had one more question to answer.  What would happen if we took a solid powder and added a liquid?  Students made their predictions (that it would be chocolate milk) and were pleasantly surprised to find out that this particular solid and liquid, combined together, created a thick liquid known as chocolate pudding!!

Yearbook ipad Competition

Our 2nd grade friends had the opportunity to participate in an art contest for our Hickory Hill yearbook.  The students who were interested created an ipad depicting life in 2nd grade.  The following are our classroom entries.  While the overall 2nd grade winner was selected from an entry from a different classroom, our winner was Mya.  May's ipad will be featured on our classroom page in this year's yearbook.  Great job everyone!! 

Music Program

I apologize in advance for poor video editing.  I am a windows girl, not Apple and since this was videoed on my iPad I lack the skill needed to properly split it into 2.  I'm hoping that the two sections are close, with little overlap,  but no promises!  All I can say is that it was an amazing program put on by our spectacular Ms. Palatas.  She rocks!  And as you can see in the video, so do my 2nd grade friends!!!

Dean Jacobs

Dean Jacobs is a fantastic writer, a word explorer, and a native of Freemont, Nebraska.  We were blessed to be able to listen to him share his adventures and life philosophy here at Hickory Hill Elementary.  He certainly sparked some world traveling enthusiasm in our 2nd grade classroom and encouraged us to write, write, write.  :)  Stop by his website and follow his adventures. 

http://www.deanjacobs.org/

 

 

Investigating Liquids

Our newest science unit is all about matter - solids and liquids to be specific!  Last week we began by looking at solids and this week it is our opportunity to have some hands on experience with liquids.  Students began by just observing some liquids in bottles.  What did they notice about how the liquids acted and moved?  What adjectives could they use to describe the liquids?  They even learned a few new vocabulary words to help in their descriptions - viscous, translucent, and transparent.  I can't wait to see what next week's experiences will be...

Readers Theater

This week in guided reading our class has focused on FLUENCY!!  Fluency is the art of reading with expression, phrasing, smoothness, and at the appropriate rate.  Fluency is a part of instruction every week during reading, but this week we chose to focus solely on it!  Student groups were given a reader's theater passage to master for fluency.  We discussed what words should be stressed and how each character would sound delivering their lines, based on the action in the selection.  Overall, they did a fantastic job with their fluency!  I hope you enjoy the majority of our selections.  A few were not able to be recorded and shared due to the participants. 

Thanks for stopping by to visit and get a little glimpse into our classroom each day.

Love, Mrs. Heath and Team