Fantastic First Week

I cannot believe the first week of school is over already. Whew I am exhausted but the preparation was well worth it. Eighteen eager students entered my door Tuesday morning and filled the room with laughter, love, and a mind ready to be filled with new knowledge. The week was quite a success as we learned our routines and procedures and really got to know each other. Every afternoon we reflected with "our favorite part of the day was..." Read on to find out the student's top 5 favorite parts of 2nd grade so far.

Top 5 Favorite Things...

#5. Hopes and Dreams

After reading the Little Red House and cutting an apple horizontally to find the "little red house without a door, with a star, with a star inside" we discussed why we are at school. I think it is always important at the beginning of the year to set goals and remind ourselves why we come to school everyday. The students wrote and illustrated their hopes and dreams for the year. Their dreams ranged from what they wanted to be when they grew up to goals for 2nd grade. What a great reminder and reflection for the kids!

#4. Flat Stanley Summer Reading Character Doll

The students were asked to analyze the character of Flat Stanley. This entailed students brainstorming important character traits that Flat Stanley possessed and actions that described Flat Stanley. For example, Flat Stanley dressed up as a girl to catch the museum thief and showed the reader he was courageous. After creating an anchor chart, the students went to work illustrating a picture of Flat Stanley and using speech bubbles and visuals to demonstrate their understanding of the character of Flat Stanley. They did an awesome job!

#3. Cereal Investigations

I absolutely LOVE teaching Science and the students really cannot get enough of it. On the first day I talked about some of the science experiments I have done in the past and the kids were super excited to get started with science right away. Friday was their first day with an investigation and they had such a great time becoming scientists. We first learned safety and then proceeded to learn about how to make observations, a key component to becoming a scientist. Each child was given a handful of blueberry muffin mini wheat's, a hand lens, paper towel, measuring tape, and science notebook. They went to work observing using the 5 senses and recording observations in their science journal. Needless to say, this was a class favorite.

Examining the crunched up mini wheat with the hand lens.

Measuring and observing in action

#2. Puzzle

One of our first day activities was getting a blank puzzle piece and decorating it with designs or things they told about us. Afterwards, as a class with put the puzzle pieces together to see what the hidden message was: "We Fit Together." The kids loved this activity and learned how it is going to take each one of us working together to make the most of our 2nd grade experience.

#1. Decorating Writing Folders

Writing is such an important part of the 2nd grade classroom. To get students excited and eager about writing everyday, we decorated our folders with stickers, scrapbook paper, and pictures. It was so neat to see them expressing themselves and wanting to get started writing asap!

WOW! This was definitely an awesome week and I am so excited about Week 2.