Reminders
The cold weather is here; please help your second grader dress appropriately, as we play outside every day. Please also help them remember a coat.
Please continue to check your child's communicator each evening and sign it. It lets me know you are seeing their homework and their choices for the day, and it lets your second grader know that you're interested in what they do all day.
Please click here (or on the tab above) to see the updated December ongoing calendar. It has information about Spirit Week!
Upcoming week
Book orders for December are due THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, so there will be time to get the books before we go on winter break.
Firwood's fifth graders are having a Christmas tree/fundraiser for their end of year trip TOMORROW, Saturday, December 3, from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Trees are $30 for five to six foot Douglas firs, $35 for six to seven foot Douglas firs, and $35 for Noble firs. They will also have Joe's Donuts and hot beverages for sale, too.
The Penguin Patch gift shop is coming on the 8th, and will be open during recesses until the 14th. I have sent home two flyers, and I am sure more information (and an envelope?) will be coming home early next week. In the meantime, you can click here to visit the website of the company that provides this service.
Language Arts
Spelling: we will begin a new unit of spelling words. Please click the above and to the right tab to see what the new list is, and what spelling concepts we are learning about.
Writing: we are writing friendly letters about what the holidays mean to us that will be submitted to the Sandy Post for possible publication. Look for Firwood's writing in the December 21 edition!
Reading: we are continuing to learn about water. We will be focusing on cause and effect, problem and solution, and asking questions as we read.
Math
We will be starting a new unit of study: place value! Students will be able to show how 1s, 10s, and 100s are related using manipulatives and numbers; they will be able to read, write, and model numbers up to 999; they will be able to read, write, and write in EXPANDED FORM numbers to the 1000s place. Expanded form is fun and interesting to second graders, and it helps them understand how numbers are made: 1,528 is really 1000 + 500 + 20 + 8.
We will also be working on a min-unit about telling time. Students will be able to properly label an analog clock face; identify the hour and minute hand; describe the difference between an analog (face) clock and a digital clock; tell how many seconds are in a minute, how many minutes in an hour, how many hours in a day; determine whether a time is a.m. or p.m.; use the phrases "half, quarter til, after, and past." Winter holidays are coming and an analog watch motivates second graders to develop time-telling ability!
Content area studies (Science)
We will continue our study of the properties of water, conducting some small experiments and observations. We will focus on evaporation, and how we can use that to purify water and make crystals.
Week in review
Language Arts
Reading: we learned about how communities that do not have access to fresh water solve this problem by reading a science article. We also practiced sequencing by reading a science experiment.
Writing: we started our friendly letters to the Sandy Post about what the holidays mean to us. We are going through the entire writing process for this project, starting with planning/organizing. Students wrote a key word outline and then practiced a retell to be sure they knew what they were going to say.
Math
We finished up our addition chapter by practicing a LOT of regrouping. This will be reinforced with our study of place value, and then revisited when we learn about regrouping with subtraction ("borrowing") after the new year.
Content area studies (Science)
We read a science experiment, conducted the experiment ourselves, and then developed and executed our own science experiments (click here for a summary of that and lots of pictures of fun learning).
Social/emotional/life skills
We've continued to work on self-control, kindness, keeping our spaces clean, and remembering why we are at school. The character trait of the month for the month of December is INITIATIVE. I will be encouraging them to work on getting started on their own, solving small problems on their own, and helping others (holding doors, picking something up that dropped, etc.).
Oh, and we won TWO Firwood Mustang awards for our classroom for the month of November: The golden dust pan (for keeping our room clean) and the golden whistle (for lining up quickly and quietly, and moving in lines quietly). Wahoo!
