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

Happy October!

We have hit the ground hard this week with a new reading unit and math investigation!

For the next few weeks, we will talk nonstop about nouns. This week is all about common nouns. We are using all materials from the All About Nouns pack found here!

We sorted the nouns into 3 categories using colors: person, place, and thing.

As a whole group, we sorted noun cards onto person, place, or thing mats.

We even practiced sorting common nouns with a cut and paste activity.

This is just the beginning of nouns, and we still have a lot of practice and a lot of activities to cover in the next few weeks! Snag a sample of common nouns in the All About Nouns pack here.

Today, we started talked about symmetry. Have you ever tried to introduce symmetry to 7 year olds??? Lots of blank looks and confusion at first - thank goodness for small mirrors to help us see symmetry! We broke out the pattern blocks again and partnered up to make symmetrical designs.

I love how creative they got with their designs - they really seemed to nail it! Hopefully tomorrow we can slowly back away from using the mirrors and train our little eyes to see symmetry! :)

These were too cute not to post. Last week we talked just a little about Fall and just HAD to make a scarecrow writing craftivity about why we love Fall so much!

These look great hanging out in the hall! Find this freebie here

Shawn and I were doing some things in the driveway last night, and this was our view. Couldn't resist showing you the cuteness of my babies!

I'll be back soon to show you the rest of our week! Happy October!