Holiday Party

We are having a low key holiday party tomorrow, Wednesday, December 21st from 2:00 - 2:45 in Room 9.
Everyone is welcome to attend!  We will be eating yummy food and reading a holiday book.  If you can't make it to the party, I hope you and your family enjoy a restful vacation and a happy new year!!

Gingerbread Houses

I have learned over my 13 years of experience that foam houses work much better than actual graham cracker houses (at least for me!).  So last Friday, we made foam gingerbread houses and ate some candy on the side! This was a wonderful way to end our unit on comparing gingerbread stories!  The houses were amazing and you should be able to use them year after year! (If things start to fall off, just use a little bit of tacky or foam glue to stick it down!)  We listened to holiday music and just relaxed! This is one of my most favorite activities of the year!  Enjoy the pictures!

Gingerbread Fred

We have been busy reading various versions of the Gingerbread Man tale.  You wouldn't believe how mnay variations there are!!  One of the major educational objectives of this unit is to introduce a Venn diagram to compare two stories.  Have you seen these coming home?    We have talked about the difference between a big story component such as how the fox gets close to the Gingerbread Man.  In one story the fox pretends to be deaf to get close to the Gingerbread Man while in the other story the fox helps the Gingerbread Man cross a river.  A small story component is that one Gingerbread Man had lots of icing clothes while the other Gingerbread Man had only buttons and a face.  The big story components make a difference in our understanding of the story while the little story components add detail to make the story interesting.

We also have a loveable friend named Gingerbread Fred who has been busy traveling to different homes in Colchester every night.  He has enjoyed staying with each and everyone of you!  We are making an amazing book out of all of these tales.  We will end our gingerbread study this Friday with an amazing activity (which we are trying to earn with good behavior).  We are building foam gingerbread houses while we eat candy!  What more could a second grader ask for!!  Here is a picture of some of gingerbread books and our bulletin board!  I hope the holidays are filling your house with yummy smells!

Nutrition with Little D!

Our science theme the last three weeks has been all about nutrition.  We have been talking about the 5 food groups with a loveable character named Little D!  Little D is a dragon who has gotten sick and doesn't understand why he isn't feeling well.  We have talked all about the diary, meat, fruit, and veggie groups.  Tomorrow we are tackling the grain group!  Your child should be able to name all of the food groups as well as tell you how each group helps their body.  They should also remember to tell you that the magic "ingredient" in dairy foods is calcium and the all foods in the meat group contain protein (and not all food in this group comes from animals!).  Next week, we will talk about how exercise and sleep help our body as much as eating healthy food!  Here is a picture of Little D with scales that the students have cut out listing their favorite food in each group.