Phew-where has the time gone? On one hand, I feel like we've been in school for months, while on the other it seems like I was just telling last year's class to have a good summer! Not sure if that's a good or bad thing...
I have to say, we have had an AMAZING start to the school year! I love each and every one of my 21 new second graders and we have had such a great few weeks together! I really feel like it's going to be a fantastic year. :) Our superintendent made a surprise pop in visit our first day back, which actually allowed me to get our First Day Jitter Juice activity video taped! (If I had known our social media coordinator was video taping I would have made the effort to fix my "after recess hair," but ya know-you gotta take what you can get I guess... )
*NOTE: I do not start the year with my flexible seating options. We take the first week of school to learn about each type of seating and then practice on each type. We were able to begin our "fun seats" the second week of school-so far so good!
Yes, I use bed risers to raise my floor tables at the beginning of the year instead of having to mess with 16 table legs to raise and lower them. Worked like a charm!
I've been SUPER busy since the school year began and haven't had any time to fill you all in on what we've been up to in our classroom, however since Florence has decided to make an appearance, we've been granted a little, 'Mini Staycation' for a few days, which actually means I've been given the gift of time! There's no better feeling for a teacher-am I right?! We've been fortunate enough to not have lost power as of yet, although, she did decide to leave her mark in other ways...
My tenacious little Oliver wanted to do his part to prepare. Look at this 12 pound little monkey moving sand bags all by himself!
Benson on the other hand, doesn't seem to be minding too much...
I wanted to share with you all about all of the wonderful things we've been doing these past two weeks, but realized I hardly have any photographs to showcase them! Fail. I've been out of "photographer mode" for too long and am too engrossed in helping my kiddos that I've been forgetting to take pictures. 🙈
Let's see if I can remember all that we've been up to...
School's First Day of School
We absolutely LOVED this book and my kiddos did an amazing job with this Point of View Writing activity. The pictures are so stinkin adorable and my second graders felt very fancy knowing the word, "Personification."
Grab your FREEBIE here
My dad and sister came to visit over Labor Day Weekend 💖. Always love when they come to visit!
My dad and sister came to visit over Labor Day Weekend 💖. Always love when they come to visit!
And of course, they visited our classroom as our first Mystery Readers of the new school year!
My dad makes it a point to come (all the way from Pittsburgh!) and visit my kiddos. He ALWAYS brings loads and loads of candy with him, which the kids just get a total kick out of, as you can see...
We've been learning all about Number Lines in math these past few weeks! Here we are ordering random number cards 1-50 on an imaginary number line. They had to figure out how much spacing to leave between numbers that were missing to help build number sense and the actual concept of a number line! They did an amazing job and really had to work together as a team. Made for a great team building activity the second week of school.
We build a human number line too, which we glued together and hung up in our classroom to use throughout our number line unit.
We also solved some problem solving and, "Crack the Code," activities to help with the process of how to use a number line. They were SO motivated to figure out what the riddle was I had to give some more to solve the following day. 👏
You can find all the materials we've used during this unit HERE.
We also did some lessons focused on problem solving using the book, "What Do You Do with a Problem."
It's one of my FAVORITES to start the year. It's so important to talk about problem solving with your students. We talked about BIG vs small problems, how we could solve our own problems and when we should ask others for help, along with some emotions that come along with having problems.
Again, I CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T TAKE PHOTOS during all of this!
You can check out our resource we used HERE to give you a little insight. I promise you and your students will love it!
These cards have saved my sanity like...for real...
Seriously...I have no had children asking 500 times, "Where do I put this? What do I do now? I'm finished..." I put everything on magnets so I can easily change around and customize them for whatever activity we're doing. Also goes along with our problem solving activities we did last week.
Grab your set HERE!
This week we started a unit on Kindness. 💜 We're reading books like, Nerdy Birdie, The Friend Ship, Be Kind, and Eraser.
Thanks to Florence we haven't gotten to all of them this week, so I promise to take photos when we return to school to show y'all what we've been learning about.
Being stuck in the house is making me feel a little drab-all I've been wanting to do is sit in my comfy, cozy chair and read. Which isn't' a bad thing, considering I don't typically have time to do those things from August-June. I just finished an amazing book last night! If you're a fan of Gone Girl and Girl on a Train type novels, this is a MUST for you!
Well, I'm off to watch the Steeler game and then more than likely start my next book, "Sharp Objects." I started watching on HBO, but felt a little lost. Going to try the book first-heard it's amazing!
Stay safe, everyone experiencing Florence with us right now! Everyone else, have a great week back to school!
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