It is February this week- can you believe it? It feels like spring is just around the corner.  Thursday Feb.2 is officially Groundhog Day and we will then find out if winter will stay or go.  Our grade twos will be doing a few groundhog type activities on Thursday as he is such a cute and cuddly little creature- who can possibly resist!

Homework this Week is for Health and Career.  Students have been learning about the food groups.  They will be expected to draw with pencil, colour and label a dinner meal with the food and food group they have for supper this week.  I will send this home on Monday and it is due back on Friday.  Please insist your child takes pride and puts effort into this project.  We will share these with our classmates on Friday. 

This week we will be starting our Fairy Tale unit in reading and students will be busy reading and acting out the classic tales.  Students have been enjoying writing stories in their journals that we may even have time to begin writing our own tales. Students are currently writing 6-8 solid sentences in a 45 minutes writing block.  By March, I will be expecting all students will be writing 8-10. I am currently very pleased with their gains.

In math we will continue to learn about adding up money.  This proves to be very challenging for our students.  Our grade twos can all name each coin and tell its worth.  We are now working on adding up money.  I have been teaching them to count the same coins (ie. all the dimes) and write it down.  Then at the end add it all together.  This is a good strategy for our class as long as we remember our place value and carrying when adding up the coins. Please see your child's math quiz from last week for more ideas.  Any extra support and practice you can provide at home is a great benefit to your child. Here's a fun website to practice with your child!
http://www.mathsisfun.com/money/money-master.html

Science is continuing to be about matter and Social Studies we have been learning to read and understand legends and keys on maps.

Artist of the Week: Pablo Picasso is our artist of the week for the next little while.  He is an interesting artist as his life was divided into different periods based on his emotions and life experiences.  We will be learning about cubism and collamainly.  Students will be drawing/designing themselves in this style.
I am looking for large brown paper grocery bags for this project- if you have some to spare please let me know.  Thanks!

Student Teachers are coming to visit us on the afternoon of February 8th and we will have another student teacher joining us for 2 weeks in April.  The children are looking forward to this.     

Thursday Feb. 2 at 1:00- we will be video conferencing with our buddy class in El Paso Texas.  This is a grade two class we are corresponding with to learn about the weather and climate.  We are planning to share some pictures of our snow while they plan to share desert pictures!  Quite a contrast in climates!

Today I sent home a new permission slip regarding our gymnastics field trips coming up.  This will be due back by Feb 10th.  Please note we will be needing parent helpers to drive us for these dates.  Booster seats are a necessity for our students to be able to go.  Parent drivers will not have them for your child- each child must bring their own. I will post in your child's agenda who my parent drivers are once I know.

I love working with your children!!! Today was so much fun to watch the children's excitement as they learn new things and got creative.

Highlights of Wednesday:

• Michael Mitchell's song "Canada in my Pocket"- a great video on you tube that teaches children about the names of the coins- All grade twos will need to be able to name the coins and know their worth.
  
• Creative Writing in our journals - everyone created a story about their special imaginary restaurant-this was so fun and the kids got really into it!
• Science - Experiment with Liquid properties of Cohesion- experimenting with water droplets on coins (also a perfect tie in to our money math unit) Ask your child how many water droplets fit on a penny and how this changed when we added dish detergent.
  

_A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, or musical. Libretto (pl. libretti), from Italian, is the diminutive of the word "libro" (book).

Welcome to our grade two classroom blog.  I plan to update this at least twice a month to keep families informed.  In addition to our regular classroom newsletters, you will find current information here relating to our classroom themes and learning.  Enjoy!

This week begins with a Chinese New Year celebration on Monday.  We have been learning how to write our names in Chinese and we made beautiful art portraits of Chinese Cherry blossoms last week.  Monday Jan 23rd begins with a day full of Chinese learning.  We will be reading a Chinese legend in LA, completing addition with regrouping using Chinese characters and making Chinese dragons.  In the afternoon, students will be reading and learning about Chinese New Year.  They will each receive a bag of treasures to celebrate this exciting day.

Tuesday through Friday we will be celebrating Literacy Week in our school.  Don't forget Thursday we will be dressing as our favorite storybook character!