Penguins!

This week our 2nd graders had to take the CoGAT test to find out who will qualify for our gifted program next year. I wanted them to have a fun, stress-free week of learning! So I decided to whip out my penguin unit! This is always a favorite unit for the kids (and for me)! They learn SO MUCH and are so enthusiastic.

I did all of the same activities I posted about last year. You can read about them HERE.

Here are just a few of my favorite non-fiction books that I read to the kiddos. These books helped with their fact and opinion writing, as well as their Penguin Fact Books they made at the end of the week.

One actvity Amy and I did add was penguin measurement. We got ALL 47 of our kiddos together and split them into groups of three. Each group was assigned a penguin to make (we made all 17 species)! We gave them the penguin's height, and they had to work with their group to measure and make the penguin! They were SO CUTE! And the kids really worked well together!

And the most popular penguin of all, the Emperor :)

Then in the afternoon, we taped the penguins around our classrooms, and the kids got to visit each penguin to measure it in inches and centimeters. They did AWESOME! They were all so engaged the entire time!

They recorded their data on this record sheet.

When we were all finished, we put all the penguins in order according to their heights.

We will definitely be doing this again next year! I am soooo excited for Dr. Seuss week next week! What are you all doing??

Valentine's Day!

Oh my goodness. I consumed so much sugar yesterday. Maybe Definitely more than my kiddos.

This week is Random Acts of Kindess Week at school, so we are really trying to catch others being kind. My kiddos made these cute little guys, and had to come up with ways to show kindess. I preprinted the words "HEART," "LOVING," and "KINDNESS" for this acrostic, and "randomly" handed them out :) They were so sweet!

We had a great Valentine's Day at school! This year our school decided not to have an "official" Valentine's Day party (our district said one winter party and one spring party, and our spring party will be right after state testing), but it was still a FUN, CANDY FILLED day!

We did Cara's Candy Heart Probabilty in small groups. The kids LOVED this!

Then we moved on to our Candy Heart Fun packet that I made.... I am not quite sure how to upload it to share (I have GOT to figure this out!) But here are some of the activities it included...

They had to tally and graph their candy hearts. They also had some math problems to solve about their graph (How many pink and purple in all? How many white and green in all? etc.)

Then they had to draw their candy hearts, and write the fractions that represented each color.

Once they finished all the math activties, they got to taste their candy hearts! They had to write 10 adjectives to describe them. They LOVED this little packet, and we reviewed so many skills!

Next, we made our Valentine sacks (yet another idea from Cara!) They turned out stinkin' cute! And the kids thought they were the coolest Valentine's bags they had ever made! :) LOVE THEM!



In the afternoon we handed out Valentines, snacked on lots and lots of sugar and played Valentine's Bingo! I handed these out to my kids.

After a fun, exhausting day, the office buzzed me to pick these up...

Love my hubby :) He also got me a much needed massage that I cannot wait to use!!

 By the way, my hubby's birthday is on Valentine's Day. I always feel so bad that he gets ME stuff on HIS birthday, but he does it anyway :) We celebrated his birthday/Valentine's Day over the weekend by going to our favorite steakhouse, and also going out with friends. And then on his actual birthday (V-day), we went to the Thunder game. Our boys won, THUNDER UP!

Next week we will start our penguin unit, then it'll be on to Dr. Seuss! I cannot believe this little blog has been up and running for about a year! The time has gone by so fast!!

Stars & Planets

We have finally finished up our space unit. It lasted 3 weeks, and I am not going to lie... I am all spaced out!!! I do not have all that much to post, but here are just a couple of photos I snapped...

We spent a couple of days learning about stars and constellations, and the kids LOVED it! We read a several books and looked up photos of stars and nebulas online. So cool! After we learned about stars, the kids got to make themselves as a constellation! They wrote four facts about stars, too (one on each star).

{I do not know why this one won't rotate for me. Sorry!!}

When learning about the planets, we focused first on the rock planets, then on the gas giants. We did a LOT of reading, but the kids loved it. They have been soooo into learning about the planets, and I love it! After we learned about each planet, I recorded our facts on some planet anchor charts (sorry, no photo!) Then at the end of the week, the kids made a flip book; one page per planet. They colored a picture of each planet and wrote 2-3 interesting facts about each.

Amy and I did this Pinterest inspired activity on Friday. This was seriously an AWESOME activity!! First, we had our kiddos estimate where they thought the planets would be in comparison to the Sun and each other...

Then we reviewed the real distance for each planet and whipped out the toilet paper!!! This activity was GREAT for ballpark estimates! Here are the measurements I found on google that we used. Each square of toilet paper is equal to 9 or 10 million miles.

Mercury: 36 million miles away, 4 squares.

Venus: 67 million miles away, 7 squares.

Earth: 93 million miles away, 10 squares.

Mars: 141 million miles, 15 squares.

Jupiter: 484 million miles away, 52 squares.

Saturn: 886 million miles away, 95 squares.

Uranus: 1.8 billion miles away, 192 squares.

Neptune: 2.8 billion miles away, 301 squares.

{That's the view from Uranus... Neptune was even further back a good 25 feet!!!}

The kids were AMAZED and so excited!! I think it really put it into perspective for them just how far the planets are from the Sun and from each other. I loved, loved, LOVED this activity! I would recommend doing it with another teacher, and possibly having one or two extra adults to help (we were lucky our ELL teacher just happened to be there, and she helped out a lot!) It took about 30 minutes, but could have gone longer, easily!!

Can't wait to see what everyone is doing for Valentine's day and Presidents day!!! Happy weekend :)

Can ya feel it?

This post really has no importance, but I know all teachers can relate!

Today I was in the middle of a spelling lesson and the kids were wiggly and chatty and it was driving me a little LOT nuts. Even giving them movement breaks was not helping! So I stopped the lesson for a minute and said, "I have to google something." Aaand this is what I pulled up:

Full Moon Dates 2012

Year Month Day Time Day of Week 2012 Jan 9 07:30 Mon 2012 Feb 7 21:54 Tue 2012 Mar 8 09:39 Thu 2012 Apr 6 19:19 Fri 2012 May 6 03:35 Sun 2012 Jun 4 11:12 Mon 2012 Jul 3 18:52 Tue 2012 Aug 2 03:27 Thu 2012 Aug 31 13:58 Fri 2012 Sep 30 03:19 Sun 2012 Oct 29 19:49 Mon 2012 Nov 28 14:46 Wed 2012 Dec 28 10:21 Fri

I stood up and said, "Yep, I was right."

When we learned about the moon a week or so ago, I told them that teachers ALWAYS know when a full moon is coming. Then, one of my {smart} friends said, "Is that when teachers don't have much patience, too?" Haha, isn't that the truth?!?

100th Day Fun!

I am going to try and make this a quick post because I want to head to Target and look at the new Jason Wu for Target collection! The hubby has a work party coming up and I want this dress!

Anyway! We celebrated our 100th Day this past week and the kids LOVED IT. I think their favorite part was the butcher paper I hung up on the door that they got to walk through! I soooo wish I had gotten a picture of them coming into the classroom because the excitement on their faces was PRICELESS! Who knew butcher paper was SO. COOL?!?

We started the day making our 100th Day crowns.

Usually I have the kids bring a bag of 100 items to use for a sorting and skip counting activity, but this year my friend Amy and I just decided to make the bags for them, and they had to sort the items into groups of 2, 5, 10, and 20 with a partner. They loved this!!

We worked on probability by rolling a dice 100 times and tallying which numbers we rolled. It was very helpful to give them a 100 chart to mark off each roll.

"Roll, Tally, X" was our routine :)

We thought of 100 ways to make 100! First they worked in their groups for a little while, then we came back as a class to record them! Took awhile, but it helped to do some before lunch and some after.

(Do you notice the equation with Pi in it?I have a group of boys who found out it's a number and are OBSESSED with it! So cool!)

And lastly we made ourselves at the age 100. We tore up construction paper to look like wrinkes and used cotton balls for our hair. They are soooo cute!

All in all, it was a GREAT day! Sometimes they just need a day of FUN, so I can't wait til our Valentine's day activities :)

The Sun & Moon

First of all, TGIF!!!!

This week we started our space unit, and we focused on the Sun and Moon. We have read several nonfiction books about each (don't you LOVE Gail Gibbons??!) And I am not going to lie.. I showed two videos this week... *GASP* But they were GREAT! I remember Bill Nye when I was in school, and he still rocks! He had a video on the Sun and one about the Moon.  We recorded all the fun new facts we learned on our Sun and Moon anchor charts.

To do our Sun facts, I first had the kids finger paint the center of the sun. Seriously took 10 minutes for them all to do it, and the look really cool! They needed to dry most of the morning, so we did our writing that afternoon. I had them write five or six facts on the sun rays that they folded accordion style. Super cute and easy!

We also wrote our Moon facts today. We made these AWESOME moons. Each child needs a paper plate and a straw. You need to mix a little water, black paint, karo syrup and hand soap in a dish. Have the kids blow BIG bubbles with the straw, and push the plate on it. See the pics below....

It was VERY helpful to have our 2nd grade assistant pulling kids to do this :) It only took 10-15 minutes to get everyone done, and they dry super quick.

Once they are cut out, the moons look SO. COOL!

We also made this Pinterest inspired activity today! I decided to just do 5 oreos, because the one on Pinterest does waning and waxing phases, which look the same but are just opposite :) The kids flipped for this activity. Food is just SO. EXCITING.

Next week we will only get to stars and constellations because Tuesday is our 100th day celebration and we have a professional day Friday (woohoo!)

Happy weekend, friends!

100th day is coming!

We will be celebrating our 100th day in a week, so I'm trying to gather some new, fun activities! I plan on having my kiddos make themselves at age 100 (with cotton balls for hair) and then write about it. I usually have them roll a dice 100 times and tally which number they roll the most, some estimation activities, etc... We will also make 100th day hats and/or glasses :) gotta be festive, you know! If you have any ideas, I'd loooove to hear them :)