Open House Night

My school district has a Meet Your Teacher night the week before school starts.  This is just a quick meeting for the students to say hello, meet their teacher and drop off school supplies.  Then later in September we have Open House, which is where we go over everything that happens in Second Grade and what students will be learning.  I love talking with the parents and after they leave I go home thinking about all the things I forgot to tell them!

Here are the items I had on the desks for parents.  An M & M vitamin treat, a sample of student work, a poem written by the students, the yellow slip is a for the parents to leave their child a note.  The green folder is full of all that curriculum information parents need to know, a password sheet for them to access the reading, math, science and social studies text books, and an Imagine It! spelling list of words for the entire year.

 

A close look at the "poem" on the M & M Bottle

Students drew a map of the classroom.  They colored their desk a special color.  I handed these to the parents at the door so they could use the maps to find their child's desk.

Communities and Maps...

Here are some things we've been busy doing in Social Studies:


We use the SRA Imagine It! series for reading.  In our Back to School unit, we read Little Red Riding Hood.  Then we made a cross-curricular connection and drew maps from Little Red Riding Hood's house to Grandma's house.

Our first unit in Social Studies focused on Communities.  We created triaramas showing characteristics of a rural, suburban, and urban community.  Then in the last section they made a tree map about the three different communities.

We used "paint chip" samples to create our skyscrapers.  Thanks pinterest for the great idea!

We also learned about Florida symbols.  My students created these bubble maps to organize their symbols.

For the Love of Our Earth

Well, this school year is in full swing.  I have a good group of kids this year and have enjoyed getting to know all 18 of them:)  

Our Imagine It! Reading story this week was called, "For the Love of Our Earth" and so we created these "Earths" and reflect on how we show kindness towards the Earth.  They turned out so cute and look great hanging from the ceiling.

Back to School...

I had a great summer.  Full of relaxation, family time, and trips:)  

But, now its back to work and I have had a busy week setting up my classroom and getting ready for my students to arrive.  I am very excited about only have 15 (I can't believe it!!!) students at the moment.  I am just thinking of all the neat things we can do!

I am starting off the year with a robot theme.  Here are some pictures of my classroom.  

A wonderful friend/parent made these for me!  The idea came from: http://booky4first.blogspot.com.  I LOVE them and they allow for so much more room in the classroom.

These are my birthday bags.  I prep the bags at the beginning of they year with b-day pencils, the calendar paper, bookmark, and treats for the students.  It makes it so easy when there is a birthday - all I have to do is going to the bag and take out the "gift."

This is my Welcome door.

This is my vocab. word wall

The large bboard in the back is going to be a "Gearing Up for our Future" board where students can post their monthly goals.  I have a large "robot" pinata to hang up there, just waiting for it to arrive.

I was a little crafty with this one…I purchased small cork board squares, covered them with black fabric and hung on the wall.  

Life Cycles / Animal Stretch Books

Thanks to Kris at I {Heart} Teaching for posting the directions to make these fabulous books.  I came up with the idea to use them as a life cycles lesson.

 The covers were decorated using fingerprints and stamp pads.

 The students used spinners with different animal traits on them to create their own "new" animal.  It was from an AIMS activity.