Happy Spring Break!!

Hope everyone has a restful and wonderful Easter break!  I did send homework with the kids today but there is NO SPELLING HOMEWORK, only math (which is individualized based on what we talked about your child needed extra practice with at conferences) and Social Studies.  I am hoping that the SS homework is fun for the kids and will help them become more familiar with the terms: career, producer, consumer, goods and services.

If you have any down-time over break and need something to keep your second grader busy, here is a math website we have bee using for the past couple months.  The kids LOVE LOVE LOVE these game.  I recommend the fraction games and the number operations :)
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/math.htm#earlymath

Everyday Math App!

For those of you who are interested, during the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, Everyday Math is offering the EMGames Apps FREE in the iTunes store.   You can preview these apps at the ST EM App site at https://www.mheonline.com/stem_apps/. If you have an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch you can download the EMGames Apps for FREE during NCTM April 13-16, 2011.

Here's a list of the available apps:

· Addition Top-It™

· Subtraction Top-It™

· Beat the Computer™

· Name that Number™

· Equivalent Fractions™

· Tric-Trac™

· Monster Squeeze™

· Baseball Multiplication 1–6™ Facts

· Baseball Multiplication 1–12™ Facts

· Divisibility Dash™

Remember, after April 16, these apps revert back to their original price of $1.99 each.

Pop Cans & Update

This past week in reading we have been working on: compound words, Fact and Opinion, 'wondering' (or questioning) while you read, and plot (the parts of a story- characters, setting, problem solution).  We have also been working ery hard to incorperate the elements of a plot into our writing.  We have started to begin working on meap-type writing as well as GP writing assesments where the students write about a specific prompt (ie- Thhe Day My Life Changed, etc) which will help us get ready for future testing.

In math we just finished unit 10 (which included a lot of place-value review/reteaching) and are now moving into Unit 11 which focuses more on multiplication and and division!  The concept is still pretty simplified (drawing pictures to solve, using arrays, etc) but will help them SO much once they begin to memorize those multiplication facts at the beginning of 3rd grade!

Also, the big news in our classroom right now is the POP CAN DRIVE.  The kids wanted to do something nice to help others and we finally decided that we should find a way to donate $ to Japan.  In talking about this we also realized that we could help our follow Poupard Student, John Kidd, by donating pop-tabs/tops to the Kidney Foundation to assist in his treatment.  Please send in any depositable cans/bottles so that we can use the 10 cents to donate to Japan AND if you can, please remove the pop tops so that we can give those to Johnny :)  Removing these tab ahead of time will save me TONS of time.  
Also, pease try to put all cans in a BLACK trash bag (this way all the cans will be out-of-sight and we will be able to collect any type of can...)  We have officailly opened this up to the whole school so I see a lot of cans in my future! I told the kids I would take the top 2 can collectors with me to Kroger to deposit the cans when the time comes. Thanks for your support! I love that the kids are doing something to help others and are learning an important lesson about charity :)

Marshmello Madness!

Friday was our PBS (good behavior) reward day.  The kids LOVED it and had a lot of fun making their marshmello creations (and a lot of fun eating the left over materials :) )

Map Skills

We are working on Map skills in class right now and were lucky enough to have a parent make these great Michigan cookies for us!  We used the cookies to practice making a Key/Legend, identify major US cities (and a couple other cities of interest!) and become more familiar with our great state! Here are a some fun pics of the project-