President's Day Celebration

February has been a BUSY month...Groundhog's Day, Valentine's Day, 100th Day of School...and now PRESIDENT'S DAY!!!  We've been busy learning all about our two most famous presidents...George Washington and Abe Lincoln.  We've spent many days reading and researching all about them.

 

To celebrate all the learning we have been doing...we had a President's Day Celebration!!!  Thanks to all the MOMS that came in to help make our morning a GREAT SUCCESS!  The kids rotated through 4 president stations.

 

First up...we made Abe's log cabin.  We learned how Abe was born in a log cabin and grew up very poor in Kentucky.  We gathered our milk cartons from the cafeteria...washed them out ;) ... and spread CHOCOLATE frosting all over them.  Then, we stuck pretzel sticks to them and they looked JUST LIKE HIS LOG CABIN. 

 



 

 

We all made a book about Abe's life.  We cut it out, stapled it together, read it...and finally answered some questions at the end!

 



 

 

Next up...we brainstormed some facts we remembered about George Washington.  Did you know George lost ALL of his TEETH!!!  Yep...that's why you never see him smile with his teeth showing. AND...he NEVER lived in the White House (because it wasn't built yet). We wrote down SIX facts we learned about George onto long white strips of paper.  Then, we made a 3 corner hat...just like George would have worn.  We stapled the hair onto the hats.  We looked just like George...don't you think?!?!?

 



 

 

 

 

Finally...we made one of every one's favorite snacks...AN ABE LINCOLN HAT!!!  We used an Oreo for the base of the hat...and FOUR Rolo's for the top of the hat.  We stuck them all together with MORE CHOCOLATE FROSTING!!!  Yum!!!  Then...we had to write about how we made it and draw illustrations...so if our moms and dads wanted to make one at home, they would know how ;)

 



 

Hope you had as much fun on President's Day as our class did!!!

100th Day of School

It's the 100th DAY OF SCHOOL!!!  Well...it's actually the 101st day of school!  Since the 100th day of school fell on Valentine's day, we decided to have our 100th day celebration the day after the 100th. 

 

I made a schedule for the kids to follow so they knew just what to expect on the 100th day of school.

 

 

 

 

First off, we made a 100 day crown to wear all day...it read "I survived 100 days of 2nd grade!"

 

For math...we had a 100 day HUNT.  I put 100 sticky notes with numbers 1-100 on them all around the room.  The kids had to walk around the room and color in on their 100's chart the color of the sticky note with the corresponding number.  Eventually...many smart second graders figured out the patterned and was able to finish their grid.

 

After we finished our grid, each student found 4 sticky notes and brought them back to their seats.  We then constructed our 100's chart from the sticky notes to double check our work...to make sure we colored in all of our numbers correctly.  Good job, guys!!!

For writing...we created a bucket list of 10 things we would like to do before we turn 100 years old!!!  Many of us wanted to go to college, travel around the world, and learn something new.  Then, we made ourselves as if we were 100 YEARS OLD!!!!

Finally...we had a little snack.  Everyone (well...some of us) brought in 100 of something good to eat.  We brought in Skittles, Cheeze Its, candy, cereal...and many other yummy things to eat.  We counted by 100's when we mixed all our goodies.  Then we got to enjoy our snack while we read for HALF of 100 minutes.

Valentine's Day

Pink and red...hearts and LOVE!!  This Valentine's day was a fun one!  To kick off our party, we attended an all school assembly magic show in the gym.  It was so cool!!!  Then...back to our classroom for a LOVELY afternoon. 

 

We first passed out our Valentine's to all our friends.  We decorated our bags in the morning with pink, purple and red designs and decorations.

 

 

 

I got a little crafty this year and made my Valentine's for my kiddos this year.  I knew saving all of those broken crayons was a good idea...they came in VERY handy for this project!

 



We LOVED looking at all our Valentine cards and goodies.  We ate cookies and drank PINK lemonade.  Yum!!!

Thanks to all the parents for helping out in the planning of  a successful Valentine's party!  The kids and I had a blast!

Celebrating Our Writing Craft

We are becoming such great writers this year!  This past unit we decided to learn from the best!  No, not Mrs. Hammerick...REAL AUTHORS!!!  Authors like Jonathan London, Patricia Pollacco, and Angela Johnson.  We read a bunch of their books and paid special attention to what they wrote in their stories.  We noticed they did a lot of neat and fun things. 

 

They wrote...ellipses, time words, comeback phrases, repeat-a-words, similes, onomatopoeia's (sound words), and adjectives.  We learned from all their good ideas and added craft into our stories!!! 

 

This writing celebration was a bit different than the others in the past.  This time we were partnered up with a friend or two from Ms. Thomas' and Ms. Dickson's classes.  We shared our stories with them and they shared theirs with us.

 

Not only did we read our stories to our second grade friends...but we had to prove we learned a thing or two from this past writing unit.  We had to show our friends where we added craft into our story.  We filled out a checklist and had to write what our comeback phrase was, what our simile was, and what adjectives, time words, and sound words we wrote. 

...and...of course...a celebration isn't really a celebration without a a fun snack...or two.  Thanks, moms and dads for all the goodies you manage to send in last minute.  The snacks are what we look forward to most on a celebration day! 

I really hope all our parents enjoyed reading our latest and greatest story we brought home from our writing celebration.  We really worked hard at proving we learned from a few great authors in this last writing unit. 

Behavior BINGO!!!

We did it!!!  We filled up our bingo board!!!  Can you believe it?  We've been working for quite a long time to earn a reward.  We've been working really hard by walking quietly in the hallway (hoping to receive a compliment from a teacher or Mrs. Funk), being responsible by remembering to get our mail and lunchboxes at the end of the school day, having great behavior at assemblies and respect circle and whenever we have a quest teacher. 

Our job was to cross out as many numbers as we could earn in a day until we got to 100!  As a reward, we voted to bring a toy to school for a day...yep!  Any toy we wanted to bring from home...iPads, Lego's, dolls, Beyblades...anything!

My girls with their dolls and animals

My boys and their electronic toys

Lego's and Beyblades

Checking out Matthews rock collection

Not only was it pajama day today at Doherty...the last school day of 2012, before we head off on WINTER BREAK...but it was also BRING A TOY TO SCHOOL DAY in Mrs. Hammerick's room!

Happy Holidays!!!

We have been learning SOOOO MUCH about adding craft into our writing.  We have been studying mentor authors like, Jonathan London, Patricia Pollocco, and Angela Johnson.  We've noticed so many things they do!  They add dialogue, onomatopoeia's and similes in their writing.  They also write ... (dot, dot, dot), use a lot of punctuation, and write many, many details.  We like when they write comeback phrases and repeat words too. We've been working really hard to write like our mentor authors. 

 

 

This holiday season we made a special gift to give to our families.  We traveled through the writing process...first we thought of a small moment about our families and planned out how our story would go.  We wrote our draft including ALL the things we learned from our mentor authors...remembering to illustrate and revise afterwards.  Our stories are magnificent!!!

We published our books by making a fancy cover, a title page, a dedications page, an about the author page...and we even included a letter to our families explaining why the story we choose to write about was so special to us!  Our families are going to LOVE them!!!!

After our books were all put together, we wrapped them up to take home to our families!  Thanks to Kohls I was able to put their books in a nice box...when the cashier said I could take a few from the pile...I hope she really meant 26!

I should work at Macy's in the gift wrapping department!

We added the finishing touches with a handmade card and bow!  I really hope our parents will treasure this wonderful story their 2nd grader is bringing home for them!  They worked really hard!

Happy Holidays!!!! 

Election Day

With the big day approaching tomorrow, we took a few minutes today to talk about this years election.  The kids all know who our two presidential candidates are.  Over the past few weeks I've overheard a few conversations about who will win the title of President of the USA.  These conversations usually happened during work time when they should have been focusing on other tasks.  I thought it would be fun to see who would be the next president if it were up to our class. 

We learned about how important it is to vote and hold an election.  We set up our own election booth and held an election.  Each student took a few seconds to sit down and privately vote for their candidate. 

THE RESULTS ARE IN!!!  By a vote of 11 to 10...OBAMA was our winner!!!  We had a few voting cards that were not counted because some students couldn't decided or didn't know who to vote for.  What a CLOSE vote!

We graphed our results in our packet and compared our results.  I guess we'll find out tomorrow (on our DAY OFF) who the next president will be.