Christmas Around the World

I know I'm late to the game, but I hope everybody had a great Fall Break and Thanksgiving holiday! Here's how I spent my days off:

 The Iron Bowl with Mr. Shawn

Our first Christmas tree!

Speaking of Christmas......
I absolutely love this time of year!!!! Christmas is my favorite season by far-there's so much happy and fun to be had-especially with 7 and 8 year olds! So, why not a trip around the world in 14 days?! Here we go.......

On Monday, we started to get ready for our trip around the world. We learned about the 7 continents and how they are unique. Then, we got ready for our trip by making a suitcase.

Get these CUTE covers from What the Teacher Wants HERE!

On Tuesday, we learned that we need a special document to travel to and from other countries: a passport! But just like everybody, we had to complete an application - complete with fingerprint.

Just a few of the countries we are visiting

And of course, all good travelers keep a journal of their journey.

Today, our passports finally arrived with our pictures! 

And we were ready to hit the road {or, uh, plane :)}

First stop: FRANCE!

We read a non-fiction passage about Pere Noel, the Santa Claus of France. On Christmas Eve, children leave their shoes by the fire place so Pere Noel will leave them candy and toys! So naturally, we had to do what the French do!

We also had a small summary booklet about Christmas in France to go along with our passage of cool facts. 

Complete with French café music :)

I'm still putting up the craft on our Christmas Around the World board - so I'll put those pictures up soon! 

Stay tuned to see where the sweeties will go over the next 3 weeks!

10 Things About October!

Forgive me. I'm human.
When I wrote the last post, I had every intention of blogging again in the month of October.
My apologies, friends!

Here is a breezy review of our busy October:

1. Author's Purpose
We learned that an author can write to persuade, inform, or entertain.
Author's Purpose is as easy as P.I.E.!

We made these nifty "pies" that are flapbooks full of information about the author's purpose.

2. Contraction Surgery
We had one week of contractions as a focus for our spelling words. We were doctors who performed intense surgery on our "patients" by cutting apart two words with our "scalpels" (scissors), cutting out the letters not needed, and making the contraction by putting on the "bandage" (apostrophe). I called my students "Dr. _________" which they thought was HILARIOUS. It was fun and different and I hope they learned a lot!

such goofballs :)

3. Cause and Effect

We read "If You Give A Mouse A Good Cookie" by Laura Numeroff and "Officer Buckle and Gloria" by Peggy Rathmann and identified some causes and effects in the stories. Not many pictures, but you get the idea. :)

We also read "A Bad Case of Stripes" by David Shannon and did a super fun craftivity with cause and effect. 

4. We finally wrapped up shapes and geometry and moved on to some fun Halloween math centers.

 5. Fall Festival

We enjoyed a day of games, food, and fun!

dancing station

inflatables

games

face painting

a surprise visit from Big Al! 

6. Living and Nonliving things/Bats and spiders

 we went outside to find some living and nonliving things with out checklists

 our class named him M.J. :)

7. CHOM Field Trip

Speaking of bats....

We took a field trip to the Children's Hands-On Museum in downtown Tuscaloosa to learn about nocturnal animals. We participated in "Bump in the Night" last year, and it was a blast. This year it fell during the perfect week-Halloween!

8. Pumpkin Book Report Projects

For our monthly book report project, the kiddos had to choose a book character and decorate a pumpkin to look like the pumpkin. They turned out great!

9. Parent Involvement Month

Thanks to all our parents for coming to spend an hour in 2nd grade this month! We had fun playing math games and making fall crafts.

10. My personal world :)

Katrina 

Mr. Shawn

Mowgli