Reading Buddies, Painting Hearts and Suncatchers

Meeting our new reading buddies in Mrs. Deegan's 2nd Grade class was an exciting part of our week. Two second graders modeled the best way to "buddy read" before introducing themselves to an Alpha student to read with. The boys and girls enjoyed meeting several reading buddies as they shared their favorite books. We look forward to having our new friends visit us in our classroom one day soon!

The boys and girls have been practicing writing letters and forming them with playdough on letter cards. We used name cards as a model to write our names on paper. Then the children drew an oval around their name and cut out the oval.

Chalkboards are often used by the children for practicing letters, their names and for drawing pictures.

We have been cutting hearts and more hearts as the children become more secure with their scissor grip and turning their papers to follow the line. After cutting out a large white heart the boys and girls used glitter paint of many bright colors to decorate it. The children worked on remembering to use a different brush for each color.

 

The boys and girls used valentine cookie cutters to order from smallest to largest and then from largest to smallest. Counting from 1 to 5 and then backwards from 5 to 1 was another activity with the hearts using one to one correspondence.

The children also order different size and color shapes into a puzzle board the same way.

In Music class this week Mrs. McIvor introduced the abstract artist, Jackson Pollock and shared one of his paintings. We learned that he painted by splattering paint with his brush to create beautiful art.

 

We pretended to be like Jackson Pollock as we dripped and splattered turquoise, pink, red and purple glue onto a sheet of wax paper.

 

Next the children used pincher fingers to choose colorful pieces of tissue paper and place them on top of their glue.

Then we placed a piece of wax paper on top to make a sandwich! We tickled the paper all over and then used our fingers and hands to smooth out the glue and tissue creating new colors as the glue blended together with the tissue.

After this piece of art dries, we are going to cut them into a heart shape and attach a ribbon to the top. Then we will hang them in the window to catch the sunlight. Please stop by to see our sun catchers!

 

The scooter and the double bike have been very popular activities on the playground!

 

Important Dates to Remember:

2/14  Valentine Party 10:00 - children may wear Valentine color clothing

2/15  Relay for Life Lunch  - children may wear purple shirts and uniform pants or skorts, hot dog lunch or lunch from home, no SAGE that day

2/17  Professional Day - no school

2/20   President's Day - no school

2/23  Coast Guard field trip

2/24  Oldie Goldie Book Fair

2/29  Class pictures

Books read this week:

"The Best Pet of All" by David Rochelle

"Who Do You Love?" by Johnathan London

"Exploring Stems" by Cynthia Sterling

"Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse" by Laura Numeroff