Shapes, Shapes, and More Shapes

Hello friends!  Have you ever had one of those days that you got out of bed and within the first 30 minutes awake, you wanted to climb back into bed and claim a do-over?  Well, that sadly was me this morning.  I had one of the most terrible mornings I have ever had in a long time.  I cried to school the entire way and began my morning at school at 6:30 already having cried off my make up and a red and puffy face.  Knowing me as well as she does, Heather immediately knew something was up.  I spent about 45 minutes in my classroom quietly trying to get myself back together.  I was very worried about the way my day would continue to go.  I am one of those people that has to have everything go "just right" or my day will fall apart.  I prayed that my morning would not dictate the rest of my day and I am pleased to tell you that it in fact did NOT dictate my day!!!  My class had a great day and it was one that I was able to look back on and think, "wow, I was good today!"  Nothing like tooting your own horn, right!?!  Any who, I thought I'd snap a quick picture and let you know what we have been working on in our second grade rooms.  We have just finished up a horrible, mind numbing, torturous,  lovely unit on addition and subtraction with regrouping.  Notice our LONG silence and break from blogging.  You can thank regrouping.  I don't know what it was but this blew their minds!!!!!  There was little that was good to share so hence our sabbatical.  So after that fun little unit, we have moved into something more fun and enjoyable...GEOMETRY!  We began by building our common shapes with Popsicle sticks and began filling out a shape books.  We have discovered that our kids are good at shape identification but lack the ability to rationalize why they know the shape based on attributes.  We have them create these shape books and keep them for reference as they work.

You can pick up your own copy of this shape book here.  Or by clicking on the picture below.  

  

Happy Shapes to you!!

Silence For Sandy Hook Elementary

A Christmas Freebie

We are proving to not be very good at this blogging thing lately!  I don't know about you but I am so exhausted at the end of the day, blogging is the last thing that is on my mind!

Heather and I have been busy planning many upcoming units for our classes.  In our math plans we have been creating some stations to go along with our mini lessons!

One of the stations that we have planned for our upcoming Christmas stations is a hundreds board activity that focuses on place value.  As I finished it tonight, I thought that I would give it as a freebie as an apology for being MIA.

Click the picture below to pick up your free copy.  The picture is a completed version, but when you download it, it will be ready to print and copy for your classroom!

Enjoy!

We have a winner! And other stuff...

Congrats to Meredith for winning our giveaway!  You will be receiving an email from us soon regarding your winnings.  Thank you to everyone who participated in our giveaway.

We have been nominated by several people for the Liebster Blog Award! Thank you so much! Since we have already been nominated for this award and given it onto others, we will just give love back to those that nominated us this time around.  First we were nominated by Amy over at Little Miss Organized.

 

 We were also nominated by Kathy at Third Grade Doodles.

  Sarah from Wishful Teaching nominated us as well.

 Thank you so much ladies! Please stop by these ladies' blogs and show them some love. After you are done showing us love of course!  Here is where we answered the questions.

 We have been working on measurement in math lately.  This is a cute activity we stole saw from a third grade teacher down the hall.  It is a "yard" with 3 "feet" and each foot has 12 "inchworms" - get it?!

 On one FINAL note - we promise this is the last topic change in this post - Juli passed her National Boards!! Yay Juli!!

100 Follower Giveaway!!!!

 Hooray for us! Not only did we reach 100 followers but we are FINALLY doing our giveaway!  Which means hooray for you because we have some fabulous ladies lined up in our giveaway.  The winner of this giveaway will receive one item from Heather's TPT store and one item from Juli's TPT store.  And in honor of this exciting milestone for us, Juli is having a 20% sale in her TpT store!

But that is not it... 
Laura is giving away a 31 Organizing Utility Tote in Aqua Circle Spirals.

Natalie over at Teachery Tidbits is giving away an item from her TPT store.

Amy aka "Little Miss Organized" is giving away an item from her TPT store.

 

Jeannie at The Second Grade Surprise is donating an item from her TPT store.

Tania at My Second Sense is also donating an item from her TPT store.

These ladies are AWESOME! We want to thank them so much for supporting our giveaway. AND thank you to all our followers!!  We are new at this, but really enjoying learning and experiencing the world of teacher blogging.  We will announce the winners on Thanksgiving day so you may have even more to be thankful for. Good Luck...
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2.NBT.1-4 through pumpkins

Halloween is over....I'm exhausted!  Between Halloween and a full moon - our kids were just a tad hyper crazy INSANE!  Then I got to come home and take my own children for what felt like an endless walk around my neighborhood to get candy.  I am recovering though and thought I would share the fun activities Juli and I did with our classes to keep their minds off Halloween.  We did a variety of things with pumpkins to teach a lot of Common Core objectives.  In math we focused on 2.NBT.1-4.  We used a GREAT unit from Sunny Days in Second Grade to have the students complete a Pumpkin Investigation. Once we were done predicting, measuring, and recording data, we moved onto cutting those pumpkins open.  We also used these items from Abby over at The Inspired Apple.  The kids loved everything we did! They kept saying how much fun they were having and I didn't have one child ask me about how much longer until they could go trick or treating.  I had grand visions of plotting the seeds on graphs using bar graphs and line plots, but we ran out of time. I think next year I will use smaller pumpkins. Before I show pictures of work I have to show a picture of my cute little trick or treaters:

               How cute are they?! Okay onto pictures that actually relate to this post:

   This is a picture of Juli's kiddos doing the predictions and investigations. We gave each group a pumpkin so we  each had about 4 groups per class.

Another one of Juli's crew doing the measurements. Everyone actually got along and worked together nicely - very little arguing!

Trying the pumpkins seeds - roasted and salted ones - not the ones we just dug out of the pumpkins!

      Graphing the results of the pumpkin seed tasting. Most liked them - I was surprised!

   Each child filled out one but I also made big versions for the hallway shown above.

      I also made a big version of this for the hallway but the kids each had their own to complete.

Examples of student work....they did awesome! After we did this, we sorted the seeds into groups of 10 and counted by 10s. Each group made their own pumpkins patch and then we compared the pumpkin patches.

All in all, it was a lot of fun and learning took place on Halloween - SUCCESS! If this looks like something you would be interested in doing with your class, you can follow the links above to Sunny Days in Second Grade and The Inspired Apple.

I am going to close with my new anchor chart for Subject and Predicate. I am hoping that leaving it up all year will help my class actually retain this information.

Thanksgiving Place Value

November has arrived.  I LOVE and hate November!  The reasons that I LOVE November?  My birthday is on Veteran's Day and my first daughter was born on Thanksgiving Day!  I also love Thanksgiving as a holiday.  I have descendants that were on the Mayflower so I love the history of the Pilgrims and teaching my kids about Plymouth and the first Thanksgiving!  I also think it is just wonderful that we take the time to acknowledge the things that we are thankful for.  We sometimes focus on the negative and the things we want and don't have.  We all have so many things to be thankful for so I really like that about the month of November.

Those are great reasons to love the month of November so how could I hate November???   Well, we don't have a full week of school in November at all!  I am a very structured person who thrives on consistency, much like children!  Short weeks for me always seem to make me feel "off" and I don't like feeling like that.  It also interrupts our routines so then my kids are all off!!!  Another reason is that National Board Scores are almost always released in November.  I have worked on it for 2 years and now I await the scores to be released for the 3rd and final time.  It is a funny thing that you work so hard on it until March, then you submit and sort of forget about the scores being released.  Then November hits and the thoughts, dreams, and dread begin!  So, hopefully this time when the scores are released I will a wonderful reason to be even more Thankful!

In the meantime, here is a fun little pack for you as you get ready for Thanksgiving. Do your kids, just like ours need more practice on Place Value?  I have updated my Passing with Place Value pack to have a Thanksgiving Theme!  Make sure to head over to my TPT store to check it out!!

 

 Happy November!