Second Grade News for May and June 2013
It's unbelievable how this year is flying by! We're down to the home stretch, but there's still so much fun and learning to be packed into such a short time!
If you haven't heard, we have ten chicken eggs in our class incubator. They take about 21 days to hatch, so we should hear some peeping around the middle of May.
In May, one of our main stories is The Art Lesson by Tomie de Paola. What a fun week we have planned, which included lots and lots of artwork. A few of the artists and techniques we will study and experiment with are: Georgia O'Keefe's flower watercolors, Henri Matisse's art using free form shapes, line art, stencils, and rhythm.
We will continue our science unit on balance and motion, with lots of fun hands-on experiments. To coincide with this unit, we will have a writers' workshop to learn how to write instructions. The students may choose one of the experiments we have done or another topic for which to write instructions.
Our last I.R.I. state reading test is planned for Wednesday, May 8th. Please have your child get a good night's sleep and eat a healthy breakfast with protein, in order to be ready to show what they know.
The week of May 20th, our reading story will be Moses Goes to a Concert, which is about a little boy who is deaf. This fits in wonderfully with our Social Studies unit on communication and science unit on hearing. We will have a guest speaker who will teach about the hearing impaired.
For the week of May 27th, our main reading story will be School Mural. On Thursday, May 30th we will take a field trip to the public library to listen to stories, find out about the summer library program, paint a mural on their windows and decorate their sidewalks with chalk. While we're downtown, we'll take the students on a walking field trip to see the sculptures.
Wednesday, May 22nd, we will have Family Chess Night from 6:30-7:30, so that your child can challenge YOU to a game of chess! We will also start our in-class chess tournament, to be followed the next week with our second grade chess finals.
There will probably be no school on Friday, May 24th due to our unused snow day and definitely no school on Monday, May 27th.
We will hold student led conferences on Tuesday, May 28th, in which your child will share with you the portfolio of their work they have kept all year. More details to follow.
Another field trip is planned for Monday, June 3rd to Ponderosa State Park. We will be gone most of the day. We'd love to have you join us!
In math, we will finish up the year with adding and subtracting triple digit numbers and lots of special math projects.
Whew!!!
Check in early June for ideas to keep your child learning over the summer!
Maggie Crawford