Classroom News

Happy December!

It is hard to believe that December is here and the holidays are in full swing.  We ended up November with a wonderful Thanksgiving Feast, complete with Pilgrims and Native Americans in costume and festive holiday songs.  Thank you again to all the parents and familiy members who volunteered to come in and bake bread, set up, and clean up after out Thanksgiving feast!

Now that it is December we will continue to study holidays, moving on to Christmas, Hannukah, and Kwanzaa, as well as the way holidays are celebrated around the world in places such as Italy, Mexico and Sweden.  We will be making many craft projects to accompany our holiday studies this month!  

During the first week of December, we will be ending our second unit of reading.  Children will be taking their second major unit test, as well as the phonics and spelling assessments that were shared at parent-teacher conferences.  Children will also be reading the 2nd Frye word list for me during this week.  After the unit testing is through, we will be moving on to unit 3.  In this unit, children will be working on new consonant blends and digraphs.  The spelling words will reflect the blends/digraphs being taught that week.  We will also begin adding challenge words to the weekly spelling tests!  These words are high-frequency words, many of which will be found on the Frye word lists.  These words can be found in the weekly stories read from our anthology, and will be added to the spelling test that corresponds with that story. 

In math, we will begin one of my favorite units-Geometry!  Children will begin this unit by learning to classify objects into categories by size, shape and color.  From there, children will learn the difference between plane (2-dimensional) and solid (3-dimensional) shapes, and all of the characteristics of each, such as number of corners, number of sides, number of flat faces, etc.  They will also learn characteristics of solid shapes such as can the particular shape be stacked? Can it slide?  Can it roll?  We will have fun during this unit finding examples of these shapes in our school and homes, and using solid shape manipulatives to demonstrate characteristics. 

Our character education word for the month of December is caring.  The second grade will be presenting this trait for us at the assembly on December 12th.  This is an appropriate character trait to dicsuss as we approach the holiday season. Discuss with your children ways that they can show they care about others, and ways that they can help people less fortunate than themselves at this time of year.  Children can be amazingly generous and thoughtful when it comes to thinking of those in need; you could spark a great, heart-warming conversation with your child!      

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