Communities and Coins

Y'all, it's official.

I have the best class in. the. whole. world. Not even kidding. These kids rock! We had a couple of friends turn 7 this week, so it's been fun celebrating birthdays and watching these little people grow in the short 2 weeks I've had them.

This week our Reading was integrated with a Social Studies unit about urban, suburban, and rural communities. We worked on a really cool project using an old shoebox to make community dioramas. The kids were given an urban, suburban, or rural setting on paper that they colored, cut, and glued inside the shoebox. They even had a sign where they could create a name for their town - these were hilarious!! My favorite town name is probably "TJ Yeldon Town"-who is an Alabama football player. If you're a 7 year old boy living in Tuscaloosa, you obviously have to name your shoebox town after a football player!

Here are some other finished dioramas-they ALL turned out fantastic!!

 

In math this week, I really focused on identifying coin and coin values. On Friday, we started a game called "Collect $0.25", where you have to add/trade coins to get to 25 cents. In Alabama, 2nd grade is the first time students get exposed to money (which is crazy to me!). This meant that we had to learn these coins ASAP if we had to play games with them! I used Blair Turner's 2nd Grade Interactive Notebook to start learning about some moolah! (I wrote about the interactive notebook in this post before school started). 

First, we made a chart about the 4 main types of coins. The kiddos were given a container of coins, wrote down their observations about them, and then we discussed their observations in whole group. 

ignore the disgusting board-learning happens here!

On Wednesday, we finally broke out our math journals for the first time and started with our interactive notebooks. I think what I love the most about these math journals is that it will become a tool and resource for the kids. They can always get out their math journal if they need help remembering how much a nickel is worth because we organized all the information in a really cool way. 

the fish is a working buddy-they sit on quiet desks and watch the student work hard. A great behavior management tool!!

messes = hard work, right???

We also started counting strips this week. We used machine tape to count as high as we could! Some of my kids got in the 800s by the end of the week. I was also able to see who really needed help with place value once they got past 99. They loved to see how high they could count-I loved to see how diligent they could work on writing 800 numbers!! That's a lot of work!

That's our week in a nutshell! It's relieving to finally be in a routine and get to work in our reading and math programs.

Oh, and have I mentioned I LOVE my sweeties?!?! :)