Butterfly Progress!

We got some more caterpillars at the start of this week so each child had a job in preparing them for the jars! We found out that they were really hard to pick up with the brush and get them in the jar!

We have the start of some chrysalis! Some of our caterpillars have started their third stage of life and are starting to make their chrysalis. We transferred them to our butterfly net this morning and will patiently wait for our next step! We think this is the coolest thing!!!

Spelling FAQ

The students have had lots of questions about spelling and I figured it would be a great idea to answer all of them in one place!

• Spelling Pretests are given right away Monday morning
• There are 15 words on the list and we go over them together. The students check their own paper
• Depending on how many words the student got right, they are given a new list to practice for the week. Your list may not look the same every week! 
• In their green homework folder, there is some suggested spelling homework for the week. This is not required and you do not have to return it to school (although you can) but it is recommended to help them practice their words all week!
• We practice the spelling words during our Workstation time every day, but the majority of spelling practice is done at home. You can find lots of ideas on how to practice spelling words online!
• Spelling Post Test is done right away on Friday mornings

Hopefully that clears up some of the questions you may be having at home about Spelling! 2nd grade learns so many words a week including vocabulary words, high frequency words, words in their stories, as well as their spelling words, so it is important to practice these at home!

Feel free to contact me for any more questions you may have!

Caterpillars!

Last week we got to start on our first unit...Butterflies! We received the caterpillars and we joined Mrs. Hankins class to learn how to put the food in the containers, press it down, add the caterpillar, and put gauze over the top in order for them to live and grow.

It was super fun to watch and learn about these little caterpillars and what they will soon turn in to!

When I got here this morning, this is how much our caterpillars have grown! The kiddos are going to be SO excited!

**Ms. Schlegel was losing her mind Friday, and forgot to send home the completed spelling test! We all did great and all the hard work over the week paid off! Those will be coming home today along with a new list for this week! Keep working hard on those words! :)

The First Week of 2nd Grade

We had a great first week of school in 2nd grade! We jumped right into learning and spent quite a bit of time learning about our behavior plan and the rules of our school! 

We started our days in the library with the rest of 2nd grade to learn about BIST! Ask your child a few things about this behavior plan. 

Our two Bottom Line rules are:

• It is never okay to be hurtful
• It is never okay to be disruptive

We also use three goals for our life that we use every day in school. These rules are:

• I can take good care of myself, even if I am mad.
• I can be productive and follow directions even if I don't want to. 
• I can be okay, even when others are not okay.

These 3 rules we talk about every single day and if there is a problem, we talk about which rule it was that we had a hard time with. We also practiced how to calmly go to the safe seat in order to remove us from the situation and think about what we need to work on. 

We did lots of review work in our classroom!

We did a collaborative learning activity where students in our classroom had to Find A Friend that had done something to fill in a box on their paper. This was a great way to get to learn a little bit about our classmates and work together!

We also got to visit the library and go on a hunt with Mrs. Schwindt! Our library time will be 1:00pm every Wednesday. Second Graders are allowed to check out 2 books, but only if they bring their books back from the previous week!

We ended our week with our all school assembly to learn a little bit about Meadow Lane and about all of the teachers in our building!

We are so ready for this week to be a great one!

A few things about 2nd Grade!

I have had a few questions that I wanted to clarify about 2nd grade! So far we have had such a great week! Your child is getting used to our new schedule and doing really well!

I had a few questions about the work coming home with them. This week we are just playing catch up and getting them used to school so there is some review work of 1st grade. Lots of papers are coming home in their backpacks each day! These papers can stay at home. Whatever work we are doing in class together, I check over while they are working on it and then they put it in their cubbies to bring home what they have been doing in class! Their green homework folder and math homework need to be returned each day.Wednesday folders come home on Wednesday with some important information for your household, these need to be returned everyThursday so we can prepare them to go home with you the next week! 

We have jumped into our curriculum and our behavior plans right away so be asking your child about some of the things we have been working on as well as our BIST plan!

As always, please feel free to ask me any questions you may have! 

(I will not always send the same email that I post to the blog, I'm just trying to get our entire class subscribed to the blog and then I will be just posting to here!)

Open House

Thank you for joining me at Open House! We had a great turn out and I loved meeting every single one of you! I can't believe summer is over and we are getting ready for a new school year tomorrow!

After looking through the "Getting to Know You" forms you filled out at open house, I have a couple reminders:

• Dismissal the first week of school is at 2:38pm (1 hour earlier than regular)
• Don't forget to verify the email that was sent to you if you signed up for our classroom blog at open house. This will email you whenever there is a new post. The blog is used in lots of different ways like letting you know important dates, things to remember, as well as pictures of your kids in the classroom!
• Please send your child with a backpack to school every day. If your child is bringing a cold lunch, please label it as well. 
• We will have homework just about every day! We jump into our curriculum right away tomorrow. Your child will come home with a green folder every day filled with math homework, as we get further in to the school year, spelling words will also start coming home for you to practice with your child!
• If you plan on being in the building at all during the school year (this includes coming to join your child for lunch) then you need to fill out the Volunteer form on the Meadow Lane website!
• Wednesday folders will come home every week with important information from our school and our classroom. The first week you will find information about our 2nd grade team behavior plan, BIST, as well as our classroom plan, which you can read a little bit about on Wednesday! 

As always, feel free to email or call me at any time with any questions you may have! I'm so excited to start tomorrow! 

August

Wow! I can't believe it is already August and I am back at school getting ready for a new group of kiddos in 2nd grade this year! I hope your FIRST GRADER is ready for a new year and are excited about school starting!

I will be going through and removing your names from the blog list so you don't have to be bothered by all of the new emails of the school year! Definitely stop by and say hello in my new room 122! I would love to see all of my kids again!

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work with your child and your family. I miss all of my first year kindergarteners so much and can't wait to see them in 1st grade and around the building!