Fun in the Sun!

Wow! We had so much fun today on our Beach Day! Even though the sky was cloudy, we pretended we were on the beach on a sunny day! We took our beach towels, books, and sunglasses outside to read. We read for about 20 minutes then we took a break and played a beach ball game. We named a number then we counted as we passed the ball around and if you had the ball when  that number was said you were out of the game and moved to the middle of the circle. We counted by 2's, 5's,  and 10's. We also played with days of the week and months of the year.

Then we played a relay game with our second grade buddies in Mrs. Loftis's class. We put all our shoes in a pile. Each student had to run to the pile, find and put on their shoes, and then run back and tag the next person. We won by a hair!

We were tired! We then ate our popsicles on our beach towels.

When we went inside, we started our writing project titled Second Grade was a Ball. The students colored a beach ball and then glued their writing on the ball. Next, they spread glue on  construction paper and sprinkled sand on the paper to resemble the beach. Then they glued their beach ball on the construction paper. It looked like the ball was sitting on the beach!

After lunch, we read some more on our beach towels. We were then ready to get our  real beach balls! The students chose their beach ball and then  had their second grade friends sign their beach balls.  It was so much fun! We ended our day by playing Go Fish and eating a snack of gold fish.

It is hard to believe we only have two days left! This year has flown by. I will miss this class very much. They are wonderful children!

I Knew it was Spring

Painting Word Pictures
In writing we have been discussing how writers use words to help readers visualize what is happening in the text. We have discussed how we use "wow" words in our writing to paint pictures in a reader's mind.
We practiced painting word pictures by writing a poem about spring.

Painting Word Pictures was a series of three minilessons.  We started the poem with a writing framework based on the days of the week. The first day we closed our eyes and made a picture in our minds about what we see in the spring. We finished each line in the poem with a noun.

On day two we revisited our poems and revised them by adding on details at the end of each line. We added a verb and a "where","when", or "how".

On day three, we revisited the same poem and discussed adding adjectives and other descriptors to  our poems. We revised our poems by "pushing in" a word right before our noun.

And-that is how we know it is spring!

I knew it was spring when I received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from a student!