Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas and happy end of the 2nd quarter!! Thank you students for all the hard work you have put in these first two quarters and thank you parents for all the support you have given your students and me!

A few important announcement for over Christmas Break:

1. We will be having the Spelling Bee in January.  We will first have a class Spelling Bee and the top three students from our class bee will go on to the 1st and 2nd grade Bee.  Here are the Spelling words to study:

yarn, jokes, gray, verb, wildcat, print, gross, snail, farmer, draw, neck, pear, torch, zebra, until, homes, planet, rally, dragon, clover, queen, kickstand, bloom, stump, ladybug, oily, mitten, loud, haven, nobody, baseball, mower, idea, rubber, fixed, toast, envy, swipe, derby, mantle, quart, angry, beach, owed, dance, banjo, cheery, friend, crayon, ouch, well-to-do, visit, blink, months, snide, campus, power, indigo, zipper, along, inhale, solid, timber, dentist, trendy, daydream, protect, heavy, paddle, bogus, screech, gather, force, carrot, tantrum, lobster, eleven, comb, haunt, window, parlor, seaweed, danger, uncle, growl, talent, middle, together, hedge, value, botch, circle, judge, raisin, gemstone, famous, dodge, high, spaceship, island

2. School will resume on TUESDAY, JANUARY 6TH.

3. KITE DAY will take place on MONDAY, JANUARY 12TH.  Please purchase a kite for your student during Christmas Break.

4. CHARACTER PARADE will take place on FRIDAY, JANUARY 16TH.  More information will be available after break.

Thank you again for a wonderful 1st semester! I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and an enjoyable break as we celebrate the birth of Jesus!  :)

Last Week of School!

We have reached our last week of school before Christmas Break!! We have many fun activities planned for this week in celebration of Christmas!

Some important announcements for this week:

1. There will be no Spelling Test or Bible Memory Verse Test this week.

2. We will have our Christmas Party this THURSDAY! Parents are invited to come in at 10:15 and join us for some fun Christmas activities and lunch as a class.  School will dismiss at 12:30pm on Thursday for the Christmas Holiday.

Christmas Program!

What a wonderful Christmas Program on Friday night! The students did an amazing job of singing and dancing! It was great to see the results of all of our hard work this past month.  I hope that it was as enjoyable for all of you as it was for me! :)

This past week in Reading we focused on making predictions about the books we were reading.  We also continued to study addition strategies in Math. In Bible, we talked about prayer.  We talked about people that we could pray for and how we can tell God everything that is going on in our lives.

Important Information for next week:

1. Spelling Words: preacher, lunch, church, while, which, match, watch, chosen, where, pitcher, child, what, reach, when, something, write

2. Bible Memory Verse: "The Word became a human being. He made His home with us. We have seen His glory. It is the glory of the one and only Son." John 1:14a

3. There are only a few more weeks before Christmas Break! There will be no school on Friday, December 19th.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all had a wonderful break from school! We enjoyed a great Harvest Day last Tuesday and also enjoyed Pie Day! Thank you to the parents who came in to help and all those who donated a pie for us to enjoy!  The students rotated between the four 1st and 2nd grade classrooms and did different activities.  They learned about the Pilgrims journey to America and thought about what they would take with them if they had to make a long journey.  They also made bracelets that helped to tell the story of the first Thanksgiving.  In another classroom, they played some Thanksgiving inspired games and they also got to make turkey puppets! We had a great day celebrating together!

Important Information:

1. Our annual Christmas Program is this FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5th.  School will dismiss at 12:10pm on Friday and then we will come back for the Christmas Program that night.

2. Permission Slips for Christmas Program Practice were sent home last week.  Please sign and return them no later than Tuesday.

3. Our Spelling words for this week are: that, wash, with, then, both, cloth, thick, shine, wish, brush, shoes, polish, there, should, would, across

4. Our Bible Memory Verse for this week: Don't worry about anything. Instead, tell God about everything. Ask and pray. Give thanks to him.   Philippians 4:6

Welcome, Tiana!

It was wonderful to see many of you at the Walkathon this past weekend! It was the perfect weekend to be outside and enjoy God's beautiful creation! I hope you enjoyed the extra long weekend as well!

This week has been a busy one in 2.1.  In Reading, we continued to work on making Inferences during our reading.  In Writing we did a fun writing activity together.  The students enjoyed getting to add on to their friends' stories and see how their story changed as others added their ideas.  We also wrote a story as if we were Pilgrims traveling to a new land.  The student had to pick what five things they would take with them if they were leaving for a new land.  In Math, we continued to work on Addition Strategies and started learning about Ballpark Estimates.  For Bible, we finished our discussion of the Sermon on the Mount and learned how God wants us to behave towards others.  We also learned that it is important to always give thanks to God.

This week has also been full of Christmas Program practice as we get ready for our program on December 5th.  We also welcomed a new student to our class this week, Tiana Miranda.  We have had a good week of getting to know one another and relearning our routines.  On Thursday, we also had our Ice Cream Party for being the winners of the Elementary Division of the Walkathon Door Decorating Contest!! The students did a wonderful job of decorating our door and we had a fun time celebrating our hard work with Ice Cream!!

Important Information for next week:

1. Scholastic Book Orders were due TODAY. If you would still like to order, please do so online tonight.

2. Tomorrow is the PTF Holiday Market from 10am-2pm.

3. Next TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH we will have Harvest Day.  Information was sent home in Friday Folders today.  If you would like to come in and help, please send me an email.

4. Next TUESDAY is also Pie Day!! Fliers were sent home with some students who expressed interest in bringing a pie.  If you receive a slip and would like to contribute a pie please return the slip to me on Monday.  If you did not get one and would like to contribute a pie, please email me and I will let you know if there is a need.

5. Next week we will have Thanksgiving Break from WEDNESDAY, NOV 26TH - FRIDAY, NOV 28TH.  There will be no school on these three days.

6. Due to the shortened week, there will be no spelling words or Bible Memory Verse next week. Enjoy the week off!! :)

Have a blessed weekend!!

We had a busy week in 2.1! In Reading class we worked on making inferences.  We started with sentences and then moved to making inferences from books.  It was a lot of fun to be detectives and search for clues as to what the author was trying to say! For writing, we finished up our unit on Procedural Writing and made a How To book.  The students had a good time writing and illustrating their books.  For Math, we continued to talk about addition strategies and also discussed temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.  In Bible, we continued our discussion about the Sermon on the Mount.  We learned that Jesus wants us to love everyone, even those who are not nice to us and that we are to pray for others.

Next week we will be gaining a new student in our class. We are very excited to welcome her to our classroom and show her how we do things here in 2.1 and at OCSI!


Important Information:

1. WALKATHON is TOMORROW!! I hope to see many of you there! Registration starts at 8:00 am and the Walkathon officially starts at 9:00 am.

2. There will be NO SCHOOL on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17TH.

3. Scholastic Book Orders are due next FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21ST.

4. On TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH we will have our annual 1st and 2nd grade Harvest Day.

5. There will be NO SCHOOL on 11/26-11/8 for Thanksgiving Holiday.

6. Our Spelling words for next week are: rejoice, good-bye, point, cool, room, stood, toy, noise, football, enjoy, join, shook, coin, too, they, alike

7. Our Bible Memory Verse for next week is: "Give thanks to the Lord, because He is good. His faithful love continues forever."  1 Chronicles 16:34

Have a wonderful long weekend!

Another great week in 2nd grade! Thank you to all who came this morning for the Parent Observation Time.  I hope that you were able to see a little bit of what our classroom is like and that you enjoyed your visit!

This week we started practicing for our Christmas Program in December so our classroom has been full of Christmas music! :)

In Reading this week, we focused on Chunking Sounds and Letters together to help us read words.  The students did a great job or breaking up their words into smaller parts and then putting them back together.  We have seen great improvement in our reading over these last few months! In Writing, we continued with Procedural Writing and the students got to choose what they would like to write about.  We discussed the importance of giving lots of details and being very specific to help our readers understand better.  In Math we had our Unit 3 Test and started Unit 4 which will focus more on strategies that can be used in addition and subtraction.  For Bible class, we talked about Jesus calling His disciples and what it means for us to be a disciple of Jesus today.  We also started our discussion of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and how it applies to our lives today.  Today we had the opportunity to "travel" to Egypt and the students had fun learning about both Ancient and Modern Egypt.

Important Information:

1. WALKATHON is next SATURDAY, NOVEMBER15th.  More information was sent home today for those who are walking.  If you would like to walk and haven't signed up yet, there is still time to do so.  Please send in the money to me with your student.

2. There is NO SCHOOL on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17th.

3. SCHOLASTIC BOOK ORDERS were sent home yesterday.  Please see the previous post for all the details and email me if you have any questions.

3. For SPELLING this week, we will review the previous 5 lessons. Study sheets will go home with each student on Monday.

4. Our Bible Verse for this week is: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour. Hate your enemy.' But here is what I tell you. Love your enemies. Pray for those who hurt you." Matthew 5:43-44

Have a wonderful weekend!