Pen Pals

This year, I was blessed with a sweet teacher-friend in Atlanta who asked if our class could be pen pals with her 2nd graders! I am so excited to be able to do this with the children. Not only do they work on their writing skills and learn friendly-letter writing, they have the chance to communicate with students that live in a different area and may live a different lifestyle than them. I think this will broaden their world. Even though their pen pals are only in Atlanta, they are already learning new and different things about their lives!

The children worked so hard on their letters. They learned about the writing process. They began with a rough draft, I helped them edit it, and then they worked so hard to complete their final draft! I am so proud of them and all of the work they put into these letters! When we finally received our first batch of letters, they were overjoyed! Here are some pictures of the exciting day:

Scholastic Book Clubs

Dear Parents,

Sometimes the right book is all it takes to nurture a child's love of reading. That's why I'm pleased that our class will be participating in Scholastic Book Clubs this school year!

The Book Club flyers I'll be sending home each month are full of just-right, affordable books and Storia™ eBooks for every age and reading level.

Thank you for helping grow your child's love of reading and for supporting our class.

P.S. When you place your order online, you'll help earn FREE Books for our class and you also get a $5 FREE Book Pick Coupon to use on your next online order!

Ordering online is fast and easy:

• REGISTER at www.scholastic.com/bookclubs

• ENTER the Class Activation Code here: LDJYV

• CHOOSE from thousands of print titles, value packs, and Storia eBooks

• SUBMIT the order to your child's teacher

• EARN FREE Books for you and the classroom too!



To my new Second Graders!

Dear Second Grader (and parent),

I am just SO excited that I will be meeting you soon! We are going to have some wonderful adventures in second grade. I absolutely love my job because I get to come to school and have fun with you all every day! I am going to tell your parents about a few important days that are coming up, so write them down so you don't miss them!

Tuesday, August 14th at 4:00 pm- MEET THE TEACHER

A day when we get to meet each other for the first time, explore our classroom, and fill out some very important paper work. Please do not miss this day!

Monday, August 20th- FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

I can't wait for this day to come, I hope you are as excited as I am! Bring a smile and a spirit to learn as we get to know each other and our classroom!

Tuesday, September 11th at 6:00 PM- PARENT ORIENTATION

(Parents only please!) This is a wonderful opportunity to learn about what your child will be up to this year. I will inform you of our classroom procedures, discipline policy, important dates, and all sorts of other useful information. Please come!

Enjoy the rest of your summer and I'll see you soon!

New Year, New Grade, New ADVENTURES!

Well it's almost that time again... August has arrived and along with it is a new school year! I am so excited and beyond blessed to say that I will now be teaching second grade!!

After completely my internship in Vestavia in a second grade classroom, I fell in love with this age and the content we cover! There are so many things about second grade that I am looking forward to... one being the chance to really dig deep into the students' reading and comprehension. I can't wait to ignite a passion and love for reading in my little ones! Heres a sneak peek at the beginning of my (work-in-progress) classroom library!

Books, books, and more books!

Along with fun new exciting new journeys into reading, we were so blessed to be able to adopt the new AMSTI math program! I can't WAIT to get started!! This new program is engaging and hands-on, I just know children will leave the classroom with a LOVE for math!

Check out our awesome new manipulatives! Whoo hoo!!

Our classroom meeting area!

Needless to say, I am SO excited for this school year to start! Keep checking back for updates on our adventures in second grade!

Field Trip

Finally some time for another update! On the 12th, we went on a fun-filled field trip to Birmingham Southern College. The kids learned about conservation and recycling and got to spend a beautiful day outside. Thank you to the sweet parents who helped chaperone, we loved having you! :) Here are some pictures of our exciting day...

About to walk through the gardens.

Learning about the amount of waste we create in the 21st century. 

Making rings out of old wire.

Enjoying lunch in the sun!

Big smiles!

Group shot!

Math Stations

Last week, we learned about different strategies to add three addends. Here are some fun math stations the kids did to practice:

Avery and Connor are playing a matching game to practice their addition. 

Christopher and Conner are playing a fun partner addition game using dice!

Mason hard at work rolling three numbers and adding them together.

A favorite station, the SMART board.
The kids match the three addend problems to the answers to reveal a picture.

Three card compare: Zachary and Ava each pull out three cards and add the numbers together. Whoever has the highest sum wins all of the cards!

Another favorite station: computer. Hayden practices his math playing
a greater than, less than game.

Joshua practices adding by putting "craters" on the moon to help him
add the numbers together (a fun game to use during our space unit!).

Oh me, oh my, it's been too long!

Wow, finally I get a chance to sit down and post a blog update. What a fun thing to do on this beautiful Easter Sunday. :) 

Check out my update in my weather post. I have added pictures of the kids hard at work on their weather logs. Click here to check it out!

Also, I have finally added some pictures of the kids' "Seussy Character" writing. Go see that out here.

In the mean time... we have been learning about one of my favorite things... SPACE! Whoo hoo! What a learning adventure we went on! We started off the week with a "KWL" chart (what we know, what we want to know, and what we learned about space). As the week went by, some brilliant friends used our vocabulary words that week to describe space!

 We learned about stars and constellations. Then, the kids created their own constellations.

We read some books about life as an astronaut. We learned what they wear, what their job is, and how they live in space. Then, the kids created our own story about what they would do if they were an astronaut.



One of my favorite things we did was learn about the planets. Some of the kids helped me color our planets and we had a wall that we added our favorite planet facts onto as we learned about them.





Throughout the week, we were filling in out "Amazing Astronaut Adventure" journal. We drew pictures and wrote facts about astronauts and the planets we learned about. The kids did awesome!

Lastly, we tied our space unit into reading. We read some books and learned about our moon.

What fun we had! Can't wait for next week when we will begin learning about plants! My books are already ready to have little hands all over them! :)