Happy Holidays!

We've made it through one semester of second grade!  In the amount of time we've been together, we've logged 200 read alouds on our Shelfari!  These are only the ones that we can log, not even things that we've read from our textbooks that aren't available on Shelfari.  We've grown a lot...all of our reading, writing, and thinking is paying off.  Have a great break, but don't forget to keep exercising your reading muscles all break!  Come back ready to read strong for our mClass testing!

Have a wonderful holiday and a wonderful break!

Mrs. Leitze

Parent Moment...Holiday Break Screen Time

As our holiday break approaches, I was thinking about all of the things I that Nick will want to do while we're home over break.  Lately his favorite thing has been trying to watch seemingly endless hours of Bob the Builder!  When I got this article from our pediatrician today, it reminded me that we need to limit these things, especially when we're home more of the day.  The article says that children over the age of 2 should be limited to no more than 2 hours of screen time per day (while recommending NO screen time for younger children).  In our house we'll be keeping this in mind and trying to spend plenty of time doing things other than watching TV this break!  I just wanted to share this with all of you.  As always, please make sure there is time set aside every day for your child to read, either with you or another adult, or by him/herself.

Guest Blog by Jamie

Today we learned about commas and quotation marks.  We also learned about details in drawings.  The most exciting thing that we learned was in math.  We learned how to regroup.  In writing we learned how to tell some of the story.

Polar Express Fun

We began our day with a viewing of The Polar Express movie and a "train" ride around the school.  After art, lunch, and recess, we had some time to make ornaments with Mrs. Beaty's class.  Finally, we listened to The Polar Express story with the link from the blog.  Then we used our compare and contrast skills to work on a Venn Diagram for the book and the movie.  We really paid attention to a lot of the details!  One of the highlights of the day was to share a chocolate drink and have cookies with our other second grade friends.  Mrs. Leitze gave everyone a bell at the end of the day to remember this time on the Polar Express.

May it continue to ring for you as it does for me and all who truly believe.
Mrs. Leitze

Guest Blog by Addie

We have been working on The Polar Express!  We had a great day!  We had hot cocoa and cookies.  It was a great day today!

Polar Express!

We spent our day on the Polar Express in second grade today.  A guest blogger will fill you in later on all of our happenings.

If you don't know this story, this week The Polar Express is the featured online story at Barnes and Noble.  Use this link to see the story and hear it read by the author, Chris Van Allsburg.  This is a wonderful story that your whole family will enjoy!

Our Day - Guest Blog by Grace

Today we learned about that two stories can be alike like Strega Nona and The Magic Porridge Pot.  The sign is called a Venn Diagram.  We compared and some things were the same.  Both had two main characters and they both had something to do with magic pots.  Both villages were filled with food, but one had pasta and one had porridge.