Five for Friday {Linky}

It's Friday!!  Time to share my 5 most random pictures of the week.

1.  I got a box, I got a box, I got a box hey hey hey!  Stay tuned to see what's in the box!  There may even be a surprise for you in there...

2.  In attempt to hurry spring along, I decided to finally take down my winter decorations in my classroom.  Bye, bye penguins!

3. We did Acrostic poems this week.  Here is our class example (seriously, winter, go away!):

 4.  We made towers in science this week (I'll share more later!) and today we wrote about them as a class.  I love, love my projector and my Elmo!

 5.  Last Friday night, I went to Drink and Dabble with my friends.  The concept?  Drink a little and dabble with some paint.  Now, I have never painted in my life.  Ever.  The closest thing I've ever come to painting were those painting books that already had color, you just had to paint with water.  Remember those?  Anyways, I had a nice tall glass of Coca-Cola with lemon and came up with this:

What do you think??  I'm making my husband hang it up in the house somewhere.

How was your week?  Go share it with Doodle Bugs!

It's a Pot O' Gold!

This post can now be found over at The Colorful Apple!

Geometric Robots

Last week, we started geometry in our class.  As I mentioned before, geometry in second grade - so fun!  Geometry in high school?  Not so much.  Luckily I'm sticking with second grade.

We started the unit with such a fun activity!  A fellow second grade teacher gave me the idea, so I can't take any credit for it!  We made Shape Robots.

The kids were introduced to their Pattern Block template (from Everyday Math):

They then had to create a robot, using ONLY the shapes on the template.

They came out so great!  And everyone's was completely different.  Some students even added pets for their robots!

At the bottom, the students had to write about their robot.  They wrote their robot's name, what their robot looked like and what he/she did.  If they had time, the students got to color in their robot!

The kids had so much fun with this!  They took their time and were very creative with their masterpieces.  I was impressed!

Guess Who?

You know those teacher moments you come up with on the spot?  Aren't they always the best??  We had some unexpected extra time during word work the other day so I quickly came up with a game.

We are studying the different ways that the vowel sounds can be spelled.  Last week we started with short -a vs. long -a.  I have been using the Words Their Way sorts for this.  My game, for some reason, reminds me of Guess Who?

To play the game, I had the students sort their words.

Then I gave them a clue.  For example, I started with "my word has a long -a sound."  So the students flipped over all their words with the short -a sound.

The next clue was "the long -a sound is spelled -ay in my word."

And so on and so forth, until we are down to one word (I thought I took more pictures, but apparently not!).  I plan to have the students play this in partners eventually, but I wanted to start as a whole class so that they understood the flow of the game.

What's the Matter?

We started our Science Kits last week!  I was so excited to do this...and a little nervous.  Each kit contains everything you need for a for a whole science unit except for the kitchen sink, literally.  Water is the only thing that doesn't come in it!  We get the teacher's guide, the activity sheets and ALL the materials.  Yes, all.  How awesome is that?!  It is very hands-on.

We will be teaching 3 kits a year in second grade.  The teachers get trained in one per year.  We are starting with Matter this year.  

We began with discussing the three types of matter - solids, liquids and gases (that got a few giggles).  Our first experiment was to come with the properties of solid objects.  We came up with a great list after observing (that's what scientists do!) 7 different solid objects.

It was a pretty simple experiment, but the kids loved it!  Our next step is to write in our Science Notebooks about how we observe solid objects.  Another positive aspect about these kits is that there is a lot of writing involved.  We can't wait to do our next experiment!

Currently... {and a Freebie}

It's a catch up on linky parties weekend over here at Smiling In Second Grade.  Yesterday it was Five for Friday and today it is the March Currently!

S is a pretty easy letter and I still had a hard time with that last one!

I like smiling, smiling's my favorite.
I lovee to eat s'mores.  {see proof here}
I despise snow.  And shivering  And shoveling.  Come onnnn spring!

And here is my freebie just for you!  Some fun St. Patrick's day activities.

Just head on over to my TpT store to pick it up!
Let me know what you think!  Enjoy!

Five for Friday!

It's Five for Friday time!  Okay, okay.  It's been a busy week.  It's Five for Saturday time!

1. We started geometry this week.  Geometry in second grade is so much fun!  Geometry in high school?  Well that was a different story.  We started the week by making robots with our pattern block templates.

2. In Word Study we've been looking at the different ways to spell the same vowel sounds.  For example, long -a can be spelled -ay, -a, -eigh, etc.  It's a tricky language we have!  At the end of the unit, we played a Guess Who type of game.  I'll share more on that later!

3.  This week we also started our science kits!  The kids have been itching to do experiments since the box was delivered to our door.  Our kit is all about Matter.  We started by discussing the different properties of solid objects.  We got to play with some objects, what's better than that?

4.  Last weekend, my husband and I went out to dinner with friends.  For dessert, we got S'mores!  How cool is that??  They even brought flames to our table so we could roast the marshmallows!

5. Last night was the Spring Dance at our school.  So fun!  It was so cute to see all the little kids dressed up with their parents.  The PTF also did a great job decorating and setting up the high school gym.