Busy Week!

This is going to be a very busy week! The Fall Fundraiser AND the Book Fair end on Tuesday. School pictures are on Wednesday. Grandparents Days for 2nd grade is on Thursday. Our Book Swap is on Friday. Got all that?

Some Important Things This Week:

Math - Our first Math test will be on Thursday. It will cover Unit 1. I'm sending home a practice Math test for homework this week! Please practice solving math facts with missing totals and partners, and creating a story problem to match. We will also cover greater than and less than tomorrow.

Social Studies - We will wrap up the first half of our unit on Communities. On Tuesday we will learn the difference between rural, urban, and suburban communities. A study guide went home on Friday for our test which will be on Tuesday, September 20th. We'll have a Review Day on Thursday using the CLICKERS (your kids have been asking about these things since school started!!)

Reading - Our Book Swap is still on for Friday! We've got lots of books coming in and ready to go to a new home. Continue to read each night with your child. We're still working on our Reading Stamina. Have a mini competition at home!!

I know you've all been anxiously waiting for this.. Katie Beth and Abby have finished their story!

Dog Story

Well I am a dog. I need some bones for a bones cake because it's my Dad's birthday. So I went to my next door neighbor to get some bones. And as I just started to say to that cat, he yelled, "Get out of here!" It was mean so I went to his next door neighbor. Then well you get the idea.

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Have a wonderful week. Keep checking back for updates on all the fun things happening in our room. I'll end with a picture of our fabulous friend with some pretty snazzy, new glasses!

Sentence Fluency

This past week we learned about another trait of writing -- Sentence Fluency. We talked about how the sentences in our writing should be different lengths, they should flow, and they should make sense. To practice writing sentences of different lengths, the kids worked together in groups. They took turns rolling dice. Whatever number they rolled was how long their sentence needed to be. All their sentences had to flow into the same idea for a story. They were pretty cute!

My little dog's name is Momo. He wants to play everyday! And he is very small and playful. He is so cuddly like a puppy.

She teaches us when we are school. I think she's nice. We start our day which morning tubs. She teaches us math.

 One day we went to the beach. We laid out in the sun. We played out in the sun. We stayed in a huge condo and it had two pools.

Give me your money! They police looked everywhere for the missing diamond. Boom! They looked in a haunted house. Boom! Help! Help! I'm getting robbed. Boom! Ha! We found the diamond! Hooray!

When I get to college I will go to Clemson University. I will be a happy cheerleader. The boys will be strong football players.

Today our class bought a unicorn for a class pet. Now our unicorn is being mean to us.

Making Reading Fun

Some of you may be struggling with getting your child to read at home. Here are some tips to hopefully get your child excited about reading.

- Fill your home library with books your child WANTS to read. If they like dinosaurs, let them pick out dinosaur books. Ask them what they enjoy reading and let them have a say in the books they choose!

- Start your own parent-child book club. Let your child pick a book and both of you read it. Afterwards, sit down and discuss the book. What did you like? Not like? How would you change it?

- If you had some old family pictures, let your child use those to create their OWN book. Glue the pictures onto construction paper and have them write about their family adventure.

- Read together every night. Make it a special time for you to sit down with your child. Take turns reading or just listen. It can be part of your nightly routine. Just knowing that you want to take the time and listen to them makes them feel special. They enjoy it more than you'll ever know! :)

- Have a no TV Night. Instead of sitting and watching TV, get the snacks ready and snuggle up together with a bunch of books. You can read together or each of you read your own thing.

- Get more involved with the library! Get a library card together and go weekly to check out books. Local libraries usually have a lot of programs available for kids too (and they are FREE!)

- Have a Book Character Dinner. Pick a night and each person come as their favorite book character. During dinner, you guys can share why you like that particular character.

- Use the Internet for online books. Tumblebooks is a GREAT resource. The kids use this in class, but I'd be happy to send home log-in information. I'm also going to be sending home another website -- Raz Kids. Be on the lookout for instructions for accessing this at home!

Happy Reading!

Mrs. Jones' Visit

Today we were lucky enough to have Mrs. Jones come visit our classroom! She comes once a month to teach us character traits such as fairness, caring, trustworthiness, responsibility, citizenship, and respect. She brings her friend Oliver with her each time! Today she came in and reviewed what it meant to be Bucket Fillers.

Being a Bucket Filler means working hard to show others respect and appreciation. We are working hard at being kind to others and helping them when we can. Not only does it make others feel good, but it makes us have a warm and fuzzy feeling inside too! During the week, I'm always watching to see who is being a Bucket Filler. If I catch them, I put their name in Mrs. Jones' basket. On Friday, Mrs. Jones and Oliver pick names out of her basket. If their name is called, it's read on the morning news and they get a special treat!

Here are some picture from today's visit!

 They were waiting SO quietly and patiently for Mrs. Jones to get there!

 This is our friend Oliver. He's Mrs. Jones' sidekick!

 The kids got to take turns picking a fish out of the bucket that had an action on it. They had to decide if it was bucket filling or not!

Our class is definitely filled with Bucket Fillers. We are working hard every day trying to do nice things for others. My bucket was filled by one special student who wrote me a very special story. He was very excited about it!! I'll have to see if I can figure out a way to scan in the story he wrote with his drawing, but I had a smile on my face for the rest of the day after I read it.

"Once upon a time, there was a teacher who loved all the kids in her class. Her name is Mrs. Kellett."

Finishing up the week of August 29th ...

This beautiful girl was our Star Student for the week! Miss Baylee got a chance to make a book about herself. She shared it with the class on Friday. We learned she loves pasta, she has MANY friends, and she likes being a cheerleader! Thank you Baylee for always doing your best and being such a good role model!

Also, another version of the Three Little Pigs with a twist! By Aaron and Aidan

Three Little Birds and a Big Bad Dog

The big bad dog was chasing the birds out of their nest and one was made out of sticks. The big bad dog scratched the house down. The bird ran over to the next house. The big bad dog scratched the house down. The 2 little birds ran to the good house. The big bad dog tried to scratch the house down.

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Some review questions to ask your child:

1) How do you know if a book is too hard for you? Too easy? Just right?

2) What are mountains, hills, and plains?

3) What are fact families? (Practice solving Mystery Addition and Subtraction problems using the Math Mountain Cards that went home on Friday)

4) How can we take care of books in the classroom?

5) What is the difference between communities long ago and now? Homes? Toys and Games?

FEW REMINDERS:

* Grits for Grans RSVP forms are past due

* No SCHOOL on Monday

* Open House is Tuesday, September 6th from 6pm-7pm -- Please make plans to attend!! Your child has been working very hard on work to show you!

* The Book Fair is here!! It will be open in the mornings, during school, and in the afternoons. If your child brings money, I will let them go during our normal library time or in the mornings (as long as Mrs. Walker does not have a class)

* We are in need of earphones for our Ipod Shuffles. Our old ones are tearing apart!! Please no ear buds.

* As things are settling down and we're finally getting into the groove, I would love to come watch your child play football, dance, cheerlead, etc. They are so excited about their extracurricular activities and I enjoy hearing about them!! If you send in a schedule, I would love to come watch when possible! :)

Hershey Kiss Mountains and Chocolate Chip Hills

In Social Studies this week, we learned about geographical features in South Carolina. We studied this map to see where the mountains, hills, rivers, and plains were.

After we learned about these different landforms, we got to the fun stuff!! Wondering what those Twizzlers, Hershey Kisses, and Chocolate Chips were for? We used them to make a map! The Twizzlers were the outline of SC, Hershey Kisses were the mountains (the best tasting mountains I've ever had!!), hills were chocolate chips, and the plains were the Smarties. We topped it off by adding the river with some blue icing. The kids loved it!!

Reading Stamina

Each Friday we do something in class called Reading Stamina. We talked about how when we exercise, we have to build our muscles so we can get stronger and our Reading Stamina is a way for us to build our reading muscles. The students get their bag of books, pick a spot in the room, and start reading. Meanwhile, I've got a timer that I use to time them. Our goal is to stay focused on our reading for as long as possible without getting distracted or distracting others. The first time we tried this (last Friday) I made a deal with the kids. I told them if we could make it at least 5 minutes, then I'd give them a couple extra minutes recess. They convinced me they could go longer, but I told them 5 minutes was a good starting place... especially since it was our first challenge! WELL, they made it 9 minutes and 57 seconds! Blew my socks OFF! They were really looking forward to the challenge yesterday and beating their time. Unfortunately we only made it 7 minutes and 30 seconds. They were bummed, but I told them I knew we could do better next week! I did make it more challenging this week by trying to distract them. I played with their hair, tried swatting at them, and dropping markers/notepads on the floor. No one even looked up at my distractions... I'm going to have to get more creative! Here are some pictures of us reading!

This is something you guys can practice at home too! Set up your own Reading Stamina Challenges. See who can go longer... you or your child?