Biography Freebie!

This weekend has been CRAZY busy for the hubby and me! I swear that everything is going on in Oklahoma City this weekend so we have been on the go, go, go. We went to our Arts Festival Friday night (and it was a perfect night for it!), we went to the Norman Music Festival all day yesterday, and today Todd ran the Memorial Marathon Relay with his family. Needless to say, I have done absolutely nothing school related this weekend.

I did want to share a FREEBIE with you all that I used this past week! We spent the week learning about biographies. We discussed information that biographies typically include and read several biographies together. Each day, I had the students fill out a page in their Biography Journal so they could record their learning. Click here to get your copy of the journal :)

Then as a culminating activity, the students had to interview an adult family member about his/her life. Then they came back to school and we worked on writing a biography about that person. I am so bummed that I didn't photograph their work because they did a great job!

Down to 19 days! We will be doing some fun activities these last weeks with some of my favorite books... Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Miss Nelson is Missing, and Where the Wild Things Are!! And we will all do our best to make it to summer :)

2nd Grade Common Core items on TpT!

So, I am still learning this whole TpT thing. Slooowly, but surely! I added two items that I made for myself to help me document the Common Core Standards in my lesson plans. I still write out my lesson plans each day, because I like to have a hard copy of things. So these two items are how I have been documenting when I teach each skill. I am also able to keep notes about which lessons went really well or any other notes!

I hope it will help some of my fellow 2nd grade bloggers out there! I have also considered whipping up forms for grades K-5.

Anyway, check them out!

Reading and Language Packet and Mathematics Packet.

Have a great weekend!

Edible Landforms!

This week we have been learning about our great state of Oklahoma, and I decided it would be perfect to tie in landforms. We started off by reading about landforms in our social studies. Then we made the much anticipated EDIBLE LANDFORMS! The kids LOVED this! It tested my patience a bit :) but it was worth it when one of my sweeties said, "Mrs. Lynes, thank you for the best day of my LIFE!!!" Ha.

I have great parental support this year, so I assigned each child an item to bring for the project. And of course there were leftovers, so they got a little BIG sugar fix :)

Items needed are as follows:

--Template of the US traced and cut out on cardstock (I had 8 for my kids to share)

--1 tortilla per child

--2 paper plates per child (1 for candy, 1 for tortilla)

--1 plastic knife/popsicle stick per child (depending on your kids, haha)

--tubs of white icing (I used a little more than 2 tubs for 24 kids)

--Pull and Peel Twizzlers (I gave each child 1/2 of one)

--white chocolate chips

--regular chocolate chips

--gumdrops OR dots candies

--m&ms (5 BLUE for Great Lakes, 1 RED for Oklahoma {or your state!})

--coconut dyed with green food color

I prepared my plates during lunch time. It really did not take long. I would suggest seperating your red and blue m&ms beforehand though!

Look at the map key below to see what each food item represents.

The kids will be able to eat all the candy and sugary goodness off of this after they share their project with a family member. Since they traced the US with marker, they were told not to eat the tortilla :) They learned a lot and had a great time. Mrs. Lynes is tired though! Ha.

First TpT Item! (Freebie!)

I have been wanting to do TpT for awhile, but just never took the time to set up an account. But I finally did it (with the encouragement from my teammate, Amy)! Last week I did a mini unit on inventors and inventions, and this is one of the printables I used. In 2nd grade, we like to throw in some timelines when we get a chance :)

Check out this little Inventors & Inventions Timeline :) Enjoy!

Inventors & Magnets

Well, I survived the field trip to our Science Museum! My parent sponsors were fabulous, and the kids had an AWESOME time!! This past week was spent learning about inventors while tying in some science skills (sound, light, force/motion, and magnets). It turned out to be a fun week!!

I got many of my ideas from Cara! Also, if you haven't picked up her Inventors FREEBIE yet, you need to! We focused mainly on Thomas Edison (so we could tie in light), Alexander Graham Bell (to tie in sound), and the Wright Bros. (so we could tie in force and motion). Each day they added to the inventor journal that Cara made.

Then at the end of the week, the kids got to make their own inventions. They had some cute ideas :)

Amy and I also got our classes together to do a magnet investigation, and it went GREAT! We set up about 20 different stations. Each station had an item and a magnet. The kids had to write the item, make a prediction as to whether or not the item would be attracted to the magnet. Then they had to write the results. Even with 46 kids in one room it went smoothly!! Then we had a great discussion afterwards, along with some demos by Amy and I. Such a fun day!

I am SO glad we did this mini-unit before our field trip because the kids were able to apply what they learned and were twice as excited!!

I need to get off here now, we are having some stormy weather :) Have a great weekend!!

Whoa, it's been awhile.

Hi friends! I cannot believe it has been over a month since I have posted. Things have been busy, and it has taken me a little while to get back into the groove of things since Spring Break. Last week we had P/T conferences, and I was coming down with something icky, so any free time I had was spent on the couch watching Bravo....

As I said, I haven't gotten back into the groove quite yet, so I just now saw that Miss DeCarbo over at Second Grade Sugar and Spice awarded me the One Lovely Blog Award. I hope you still think I am deserving of it, even with my lack of blogging lately :)

The past few weeks were spent learning about the water cycle, clouds, and weather. I did a lot of the same activities as I did last year. And since I failed to bring my camera AT ALL, you can see some of them here and here.  I did add a few additional activities, but again, no camera :( I borrowed this cute idea from Cara. Instead of writing about rain, we did weather facts and opinions. The kiddos wrote 3 opinions on orange strips, and 3 facts on a different color of their choice. They turned out super cute, and I sooo wish I had taken pictures of them! I also threw in some activities that went along with Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. The kids LOVED learning about weather.

We are going on a field trip this coming Friday (yes, Friday the 13th!) to our Science Museum, so we are doing a mini unit on inventors and their inventions. Cara has helped me out yet again with her awesome inventors FREEBIE! Pick it up if you haven't :)

I will try and do better at taking pictures and blogging the next 6 and 1/2 weeks! (Yes, the countdown has begun!)