Spring is here!

The Second Graders have been busy lately with a variety of different activities. Read on to learn more about these goings on.



A several weeks ago our entire school was fortunate to attend a professional performance of the Magic Flute at the Plymouth State University Auditorium. To prepare for this occasion, the primary student enjoyed listening to Mozart's music at lunch time the previous month. They also attended an excellent story reduction of The Magic Flute by the Lafayette First Graders. Hence, the students were already familiar with the music, characters and storyline which allowed them to more fully enjoy the performance. The following is a student journal entry

"I liked the Magic Flute because it was funny in some parts. I had to whisper, "Har, har, har", because I could not interupt them. I liked Papagano because he was soooo funny. I liked Sarastro because he could use the force like in "Star Wars". I liked Prince Tamino because he gets confused sooo many times. I even liked the 3(2) ladies and the Queen of the Night because they looked like evil birds combined with peacocks. I liked the whole play sooooo much. I was goooood.

Jack's glowing opinion was not an anomaly. The class had a great conversation about the performance once we returned to school. Thoughts about the casting, costumes and production were enthusiastically shared. It was clear this is a group of interested young performers and theater aficionados.

Luckily, we will be supporting that interest with our class's production of "Rumpus in the Rainforest" on Tuesday May 5th at 6:00. The students have been singing along to many of the songs for over a month and now have cds of the songs they will be singing in the performance for them to practice at home. For our version of costumes, we will be tie-dying t-shirts this week so remember to send in a clean, white, cotton t-shirt by Tuesday.



Another recent development has been the opportunity for second graders to read aloud to the Lafayette kindergarten class. Many students have shown an interest in sharing their reading skills with others. In order to participate, second graders need to find a partner and choose an appropriate book. This requires the pair to think about content kindergartners will like, book length and reading difficulty. Students then practice with their partners, receive feedback from an adult and finally are scheduled for a visit to the kindergarten class. This project has motivated students to think more about expression and fluency and to work cooperatively with another peer. It is also a lovely community service opportunity. This ties in nicely with the importance of building a sense of responsibility not only for ourselves but also for others who are less able around us.



Additionally, as a culminating project for our recent science unit on sound, the children were given a teamwork (homework that is partnered with a family member) assignment to create an instrument of their own. Second graders then presented these instruments to a group of their peers. They were each interviewed by a classmate while being videotaped by yet another classmate. Next, the students concurrently presented to the entire group (and the sixth graders as well!) in the MPR in a similar fashion to Project Fair. Finally, we brought our instruments back to class and had an informal "Jam Session". It was truly cacophonous!

The 100th Day of School - Project Notes

The 100th Day of School 2/12/09

By Andrew

I brought buttons into school, 100 buttons. I got some help to count them by 10s up to 100. Then I took a picture of them in their 10s.



The Hundred Baseball Cards But Ninety-Seven

By Devyn

On the hundredth day of school, I brought a hundred baseball cards but when I counted them I only had ninety-seven. I felt kind of sad but then I noticed some of the other students didn’t have all one hundred, so then I didn’t feel as bad. I am going to try to bring in three more baseball cards to make one hundred.

Editor’s note: And indeed he did!


The One Hundreth Day

By Eliza

On the 99th day of school, Mrs. Kelley, our teacher, assigned us a project. The project was all the class should bring in 100 things. It could be anything. Some kids brought in M&Ms or Pokemon cards. But I brought in dog hairs. I sorted them by groups of ten. I have two dogs at home and I knew I could get at least 100 hairs to count. My Mom cut them very gently off my dog’s tail for me to bring in.



Shark Teeth 2/12/09

By Stephen

It was the 100th day of school, and I didn’t have anything to share about because I wasn’t in school that day. So I shared with Nicholas his shark teeth. Did you know shark teeth are very sharp? We put them in 10s and then we took a picture of them. There were 100 of them when we counted them again.



100th Day of School 2/12/09

By Gabbie

Yesterday was the 100th day of school. I brought in little green leaves. I have three trees in my driveway. It was really hard to sort. Mrs. Kelley gave me a big piece of blue paper. And then I just put it in rows of tens.




100 Legos 2/12/09

By Danny

I did 10 X 10 = 100, and then I made sure I counted the dots on the Legos.




My 100 Day Collection 2/12/09

By Anabel

I did 10 X 10 = 100 as my math problem on the 100th day of school. I brought in crafty squares on the 100th day of school. I counted by tens.



The 100th Day 2/12/09

By Sasha

I got 100 Pokemon cards. I did 10 X 10 = 100. My two favorites are Mewtwo and Abominablesnow. Jake had 100 Pokemon too, his favorite was Mewtwo.



The 100th Day 2/12/09

By Sam

On the 100th day of school, I brought in 100 Skittles. I brought in 100 Skittles because when I got home, I could eat them. I sorted them in 4 groups of 25. 25 X 4 = 100. Then I took a picture of them, so we could write about it (which we are doing right now). The 100th Day of school was very fun.



My 100th Day Collection 2/12/09

By Haley

In my class, we were supposed to bring in 100 things that we could carry ourselves. I decided to bring in 26 Littlest Pet Shops. Why did I bring in only 26? Because I counted the legs. But if you do the math, and all of them have four legs, then there’s a problem. The problem you’re probably thinking about is that then I would have 104, but no, I have one Littlest Pet Shop with no legs.




Pup Chow 2/12/09

By Jack

On the 100th day of school, I brought in 100 pieces of puppy food. I wrote the words “Pup Chow” with my pup chow. The pup chow I brought in were little circles. And I underlined the pup chow and I made a happy face too. Each letter, line, and happy face were sorted into 10s. And it was a happy 100th day of school.



Sharks Teeth 2/12/09

By Nicholas

Sharks teeth are cool, in fact, some are so sharp I think legend says you could get hurt just by looking! Anyway, Stephen and I sorted 100 shark teeth by 10s. 10 X 10 = 100.




My 100th Day Collection 2/12/09

By Hannah

On Wednesday, February 11, our class had our 100th day of school. All of us had to bring in 100 of something. Probably Jake in our class had the hardest one of all because he brought sugar. I brought in 100 stickers. The way I thought of my idea is Macie and I were making Pippi’s house in Florida. We were putting on a lot of stickers, and I remembered that we had to do our 100th day thing, so I counted how many stickers were on it now, and counted how many more stickers I needed. I had 100 stickers on it. That’s how I got 100 stickers on Pippi’s house.



The 100th Day of School

By Nataleigh

On the 99th day of school I got cats, dogs, polar bears, panda bears, hippos, wild cats, tigers, and a black cat. I had to get 100 wild animals for the next day for the 100th day of school.




THE 100TH DAY OF SCHOOL

By Phoebe

Yesterday was the 100th day of school, and we counted out 100 things. I counted out 100 M&Ms. In school we took a picture of our 100 things. I counted by color but at the end I really didn’t have enough M&M’s to count by color so I counted with other colors.




The 100th Day 2/12/09

By Macie

Everybody brought in 100 things. It was so fun! Hannah brought in snacks and we made a trail mix. It was so good! I brought 100 pieces of sea glass in. We made Valentine pouches and decorated it and pasted sparkles on it and it rocked! I hope we do this in next year’s class!

Editor’s note: 100 x 7 = a yummy trail mix!


The 100th Day 2/12/09

By Will

I made 100 names sorted in 25 on each side of a box. For my class I made little notes inside about what I liked about the classmate. For example, I wrote Dan’s name on the outside and “you make every day easy” on the inside. And then I wrote names from the school from K and 1st grades and 3rd-6th grades.




The 100th Day of School 2/13/09

By Libby

The 100th day of school was two days ago, and I brought 100 M&M’s to school! I brought 100 M&M’s because I had nothing except M&M’s!


The 100th Day 2/12/09

By Jake

On the 100th day we had to bring in 100 things but I brought in 200 things. The 200 things were Pokemon cards and sugar grains and don’t ask how I did it; I’ll just tell you. I did it under a real bright light and a butter knife.

I sorted my Pokemon cards, it was easy. All I did was put them in ten groups of ten.




The 100th Day

By Sierra

I brought pellets in for the 100th day of school. I counted by tens. I did not think of this myself. My Dad did. The pellets are from my pellet stove.




The 100th Day Collection 2/12/09

By Tom

Hi, my name is Tom and I am here to talk about my 100th day of school collection. First I had to come up with something, That was the hard part. But once I figured it out it seemed easy. When I got home I started on my 100 100’s (that I was writing down). Me and my Mom sorted them. We sorted them by 10 100’s per line. This is Thomas signing off.


The 100th Day of School 2/12/09

By Grace

I brought in 100 M&M’s. I thought of these because I was watching the cat eating cat food and the cat food looked like chocolate chips and that reminded me of M&M’s. My Dad bought a big bag of them because he likes to make gorp and M&M’s are in gorp. I sorted them by 10’s. I had fun with the 100th day of school!


The End

READING DAY

Introduction by:
Anabel, Stephen, Danforth, Gabbie, Will, Nicholas, Thomas

On Friday, January 16, our Winter Program was canceled because it was too cold (can you believe -20 degrees!). So, we decided to have a fun reading day.
We got to bring in one stuffy, a blanket, headlamps and we could wear our pajamas!!! We built forts out of quilts, sheets and desks. We built them with our friends. We went in them and we read in them. Some of the forts kept falling down, but it was still fun when they fell down!


Reading Day

More about Reading Day

By: Hannah, Eliza, Sam, Sasha, Nataleigh, Grace, Maggie, Jack, Haley, Jake

Before we went to lunch, Mrs. Evans came in to our class and read a book called "Me First" by Helen Lester. It was about a pig who always wanted to be first. He learned from the Sand Witch that it's not always good to be first. It was really, really fun.
After lunch, Mr. Johnk read "Thank You, Mr. Faulker", by Patricia Polacco. The book was about her when she was a child. It was very emotional but also awesomely cool. (So cool it was better than pie!)
We read a lot of books and we took Accelerated Reader quizzes on them. If you got 80% or better it would count how many words were in your book. Our total word count was over 43,000!
Reading Day was absolutely, positively awesome!

The First of a New Year - Catching Up on Old News

Our Second Grade Blog
By Eliza

Welcome to our second grade blog. We decided to make the second grade blog because we wanted to share some good ideas with you. We made it with Mrs. Kelley our teacher. She asked us some things we like about her class and then she made the blog. We made the blog November 4, 2008. Our second grade class and our teacher Mrs. Kelley made the blog. We enjoyed making our second grade blog.



The Flower Experiment
By Sasha

Hi, I’m Sasha and I’m writing about our flower experiment. 2nd grade did a flower experiment. We did this in October! We did this in the science lab.

I wrote about how it changed color. I put my carnation in water with green food coloring, and my flower turned green. The other flowers changed color also. Me, Sam, Will, Jack and Devyn were at the same table.

We did it because we wanted the white flowers to change color, and they did! The flowers changed color in one week.


The Copper Cannon Hike!
By Sam

Hi, my name is Sam and I’m writing about our Copper Cannon field trip. We went to Copper Cannon Camp in early October.

On the trail, Stephen, our leader, told us that ripping off bark is just like ripping skin off on every tree. So, don’t rip off bark from trees.

Stephen also told us about vernal pools. Vernal pools are like big puddles. They’re drinking pools, pools for bathing and homes for frogs and salamanders. They lay eggs in them, swim in them and mate in them.

We learned a lot on the trail. Stephen is a nice guide. The hike was very FUN!





Copper Cannon Scavenger Hunt
By Anabel

We went on a field trip. We went on a walk with Pete. On the walk we went on a scavenger hunt.

On the scavenger hunt it started out easy, but then got hard. First we had to find a leaf. That was easy. Then we had to find a leaf without holes. That was a little harder.

Then we had to find garbage. That was sort of easy. Then we looked for a feather. That was really hard.


I really liked Copper Cannon.




Thank You!
By Mrs. Kelley

Thanks for everyone’s patience waiting for this work to get uploaded to the internet. Unfortunately, I am not a technological wizard and each new thing I try – this time inserting pictures and video (which we couldn't quite manage this time) – tends to slow the process way down.
But, the good news is that now we are over the “first time” hump we should be able to bring you more regular updates about the goings on in our second grade. Many children are just finishing typing and should be ready to post their pieces in the next week or two.
Enjoy!