Quick Holiday Recap.... and Welcome back from break!

I am going to start off this post with a very quick recap of what we did the week before winter break.  It was a whirlwind of a week, so much that I barely managed to get any pictures.  In that week before break we managed to get in a lot of different activities.  We had a Polar Express day where we read the book and watched the movie and did a compare/contrast activity between the 20 page book and the 90 minute movie.  As should be expected, there were quite the number of differences between the two and the students didn't want to leave any out of the discussion.  We also had a gingerbread day during that week.  On gingerbread day, the students were able to do some writing and coinciding taste-testing about gingerbread.  They wrote paragraphs on how to eat a gingerbread man.  It was amazing to see how many different ways there are in the minds of second graders.  Some started with the head and finished with the feet, while others started on each limb and worked their way back to the head.  Not everyone enjoyed tasting the gingerbread, but it was certainly a fun experience to have as a whole class.  One of the days that week was snowflake day.  We read a  non-fiction book called "Snowflake Bentley" and learned all about how he took pictures of snowflakes in order to study them before they melted.  To end that day the students had a chance to make their own snowflakes with just a folded piece of paper and a pair of scissors.  In between all of these fun holiday activities we also managed to finish our final dress-rehearsal for our Christmas performance.  Both the morning and evening performances were a huge success.  In the evening, there was standing-room only available in the cafeteria during out performance.  The class did great and should be incredibly proud of all the work they put into the performance and the many practices between Thanksgiving and Winter Break.

To end our week before break we had a very small class "party" where I brought in sugar cookies and the students decorated them with different colored frosting and many sprinkles.  It was a great way to end the week and celebrate as a class.

(In all honesty, I was hoping to post the Christmas stuff before now, but I guess I got wrapped up in my own winter break.)

Now that we have been back for a week, let's get updated on the current classroom activities and curriculum.  In math our focus has been learning how to tell time.  This at first was a challenging skill for some, but throughout the week all of the students were able to master parts or all of this skill.  While learning about how to tell time, I wanted to make it fairly easy for the students to remember which hand was the minute hand and which was for the hours.  So, we decided as a class that the tallest teacher at our school is Mr. Ferrell (Kindergarten), so he became our minute hand because it was nice and tall.  It was also decided that Mrs. Crook is quite short, so I became the hour hand.  Many of the kids loved this idea and it became much simpler to determine which hand was which on the clock.  The class laid out giant clocks on the floor in their groups using 3x5 cards with the numbers written on them for the hours and some linking cubes in groups of 5, which represented the minutes in-between each of the numbers on the outside of the clock.  They turned out really good.

To add to the unit, each student made a clock like the one pictured below.  The idea here is that each number on the clock gets its own room.  Once the students realized where each of the numbers' rooms were, this became a great strategy to identify the hour...especially when it starts to get a little tricky as you get closer to the next hour starting.

We have also played quite a few games this week to help learn how to tell time.  We played "Red Light, Green Light" with mini clocks one morning.  The students had to show me the time that was called out on their mini clocks and if they were correct, they took a step forward and were given a green light.  If they showed the incorrect time, they got a red light and had to stay where they were.  Even though it was a cold morning when we played, I think the class had a great "time" with this game.

This week in science, we began our new unit of Earth and Space Science.  We are starting with the idea that some events on earth occur quickly, while others occur slowly.  We started at the slow end and started talking about how mountains are formed.  We watched this amazing video of how the Himalayan Mountains were formed over 70 million years, but over the course of only a couple of minutes.  

For this investigation, each student was given a small Milky Way candy bar.  I had cut a small break down the middle of each candy bar and the students had to pull the candy bar apart, but not break it.  Then the students had to use their thumb and their index finger and squish the two "land-forms" back together and they were able to see how mountains are formed as the earth's crust pushes two pieces of land together.

Mountain #1

Mountain #2

Mountain #3

Mountain #4

And of course... it is near impossible to use Milky Way candy bars for such a cool investigation and not eat them.  So after much anticipation from the students they were able to eat their "mountains."  It was quite interesting to hear the students' observations that all of their mountains turned out differently, whether it was due to different hand pressure, different candy bar surfaces, or even different amounts of speed.  

One of the things that I did not mention from before break was working on code.org.  As part of Computer Science week, the kids were able to participate in all sorts of coding activities online.  While we certainly had varying levels of being able to code, each of the students were able to write some lines of code and feel successful.

Starting code.org before break was the perfect lead into today's afternoon activity of using Google CS First.  This is also a coding activity (that I had tried last year and loved), but goes a little more in depth about telling a story with what you create.  Through the Google CS First activities, the students will use scratch.mit to build stories and characters that they can move and command at the touch of a key.  Being the first day, it was a bit rough but I think with some perseverance on everybody's parts, we will be able to make it through and feel like we are successful coding (beginning) programmers.

What a week it has been!  Welcome back and here is to more wonderful learning!

P.S. In other news, some of you may have heard some interesting news from your students.  I am pregnant and did tell that news to the class earlier this week.  I am not due until the middle of summer, and just in case some of you were concerned.... I am most definitely finishing out this school year with this class.  (I will also be back in the fall to teach a new set of 2nd graders.)  As you can imagine, my family is very excited about this addition.