Snow Dough

Today we made snow dough - a super-sensory modeling medium.  Because of the ingredients, it even crunches like snow!  The recipe is really easy:
Snow Dough
1 16 oz. package of corn starch
1/2 cup of vegetable oil (baby oil will work too)
glitter (As much as you like!)
Put all of the ingredients together in a bowl and stir with a spoon.  When it gets too stiff, knead with your fingers.  Store the dough in an air-tight container.

We've been learning lots about snow and snowflakes, so I thought that this would be a fun way to incorporate art, science, and FUN!

Math Fact Practice

We are halfway through the year already!  Some students are really picking up speed on their timed math tests and have been moving forward steadily.  I'd like to thank those parents who help their kids with math fact practice-it makes a difference.  Students should be through their adding tests and working on subtracting.  I've paired struggling students up with some of the math whizzes in class to work together on some fun math games to improve automaticity.  One game we played as a class is called Switch! It's actually a version of the game Snoop, if you're familiar with that.  Students played in groups of four.  Each had a set of cards - two through queen.  Students took turns rolling a pair of dice. They added them, and flipped over the corresponding card.  They can keep rolling until they can't flip over any more cards, then it's the next player's turn.  The first person in the whole room who flips over all of their cards yells, "Switch!"  Everyone stops and adds up their remaining face-up cards and writes the total on a scorecard.  The person who yelled switch gets to switch seats with anyone they want.  We played five rounds.  At the end, students added up all five totals - great practice for adding up two-digit numbers.  The overall winner was the person with the least amount of points.  Kids LOVED this game and it was great practice at adding quickly.

It's snowing!

Tuesday was the perfect day to introduce our new science topics: water and states of matter.  We had lots of practice making observations when we were conducting our science experiments in December, so we used those skills to go "into the field" and observe snowflakes.  This is water in its solid state and it's incredibly beautiful!  Partners studied the fresh snowflakes as they fell onto black paper.  They drew pictures of what they saw and wrote descriptions.  I hope we get this opportunity again soon!  We'd like to find out if snowflakes look different under different conditions.

The Week Before Chirstmas Break...

 It was such a joyful, busy time.  We all had so much fun being in the spirit of the holidays.  There were lots of smiles and good cheer!

Santa came to visit!

We worked hard on our parent gifts.  I hope you liked them!

We had a great time reading a Readers' Theater version of
How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  Two students were
assigned to each part and we sat in a circle while we read.  

We played Scoot!  It's a game we play often to review for a math test.
Tony is enjoying a gumdrop or two at this desk.

It was so much fun to exchange and unpack our party bags!

Sing-A-Long in the gym.  Thanks Ms. Miron!

 I'm so proud!  Our 2nd grade had the best manners and behavior in the lunchroom all last month, so we were awarded the prestigious Golden Spoon.  Not only that, but we had 100% participation in dressing up for Spirit Day, so we were awarded the Spirit Day Banner!  What an awesome class!!!