Daily Archives: November 22, 2015

Veterans’ Day 2015

Until just a few years ago, Veterans’ Day came and went at Robinson without much fanfare.  I mean, yeah, we’d mention it to our classes, perhaps watch a video or read a book about why the day was special, but that was pretty much it.  There was not a whole-school focus, an assembly or any other type of celebration.  Then ( I believe the year Mrs. Kesler became our FABULOUS music teacher), that all changed and Veterans’ Day became one of the most special days on the calendar. 🙂 Remember last year?

Even before the day came we were hard at work: writing letters of thank you to veterans, as well as creating the centerpiece place mats for the tables in the cafeteria for the reception.

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And pretty much since school started, too, kiddos have been working on the music for the assembly we hold yearly now to celebrate those who give/gave their very best to keep us safe and sound.  While I would love to invite each and every one of you to experience what is now Veterans’ Day at our school, I only have a couple of short videos to share.  It’s a taste at least, right? 🙂  Oh, and I HATE to admit this, but it always seems that my phone runs out of memory right in the middle of someone’s video I’m trying to record–yep, at just the WRONG moment–and this time it was during the girls’ song. 😦  (Since we split boys and girls for specials, our grade level had two songs).  Hopefully you’ll get the idea.  Again–super sorry I didn’t catch it all. 😦

Before 2nd grade started, Khalani got to represent our grade and read a special thank you poem for the veterans.  Our theme was HEROES.

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Then the boys sang their tribute:

Girls took their turn next:

I found two more pictures of how handsome and beautiful we look all dressed up:

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Happy Veterans’ Day!  How did you celebrate the special day? 🙂

Field Trip Fun in Downtown StL

We are lucky to be able to take field trips–pretty much to anywhere we want to go!  This year our team was trying to think outside-the-box a little more than usual, planning for field studies that not only connect to our 2nd grade curriculum, but that are important experiences for all kids to have in general.  We’ve thrown out some amazing ideas, and this fall we ended up with a trip that I’m pretty sure no one had ever gone on before. It was related to our study of economics, and was loads of fun, too. 🙂

Mrs. Driscoll worked it out for us to be able to visit the Federal Reserve Bank (and I hate to admit I didn’t even know we had one in our city!), as well as the Old Courthouse, which is a great historical building to visit.  But wait–the best part (or at least the fancy-schmanciest part) is that we got to eat lunch in a hotel ballroom!  Yep–she worked hard to secure a venue that would accommodate us no matter what St. Louis fall weather would throw at us–and we ended up being welcomed by the Crowne Plaza hotel, which was right across the street from both of the places we were visiting.  And yes, it was a lucky find–by the time it was time for lunch it was pouring down rain!  Way to go, Mrs. Driscoll, and thanks Crowne Plaza!

One more picture:

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Look! Ava got to have both of her parents on our trip–Mom came along as a chaperone, and Dad works at the Federal Reserve Bank and got to join us for lunch! He was working that day and planned it so he could be on duty when we visited the museum at the bank.  What a special surprise!

We learned much, laughed a lot and had a great time!

Halloween 2015 (a little late…)

Yep, I know.  It’s Thanksgiving week.  And you know what?  If I remember correctly, I posted about Halloween on Thanksgiving last year, too.  And this year, too.  Man.  Oh well, it’s true that it’s better late than never, right? 🙂

I don’t have much to say about it, except that we had SUPER 2nd grade costumes, a SUPER party thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Gordhamer (it even involved an obstacle course in our room that TOTALLY worked, even among the other stations with games and a snack.  Kiddos totally ROCKED being respectful and appropriate!), and a SUPER parade around the grounds of Aberdeen Heights next door.  The residents love to see our smiling faces and fancy costumes and we waved at SO MANY PEOPLE!

Yep, it was great!  I don’t have many pictures because I was too busy having fun, but here are a few:

Twin Red Riding Hoods!
Lawrence had his Spidey-Sense going!
Ella Marie was a bat. 🙂
Second grade Halloween selfie!

Ok, and since this is my blog, and so I can be a little bit indulgent sometimes, here are two more from my own Halloween at home (you know you were wondering!!):

Luke and his droid. 🙂
Bearden tribute to Star Wars

Hope yours was fun!  Here’s to posting Halloween pics in October next year! LOL

 

Second Grade Math Warm-Ups: Week of November 16-20, 2015

I apologize for the fact that it’s been nearly THREE WEEKS since I last wrote on this blog.  I’m not even sure what happened.  Oh wait, I do.  Life happened.  And I was tired.  It was one of those times in life when you have to do really cool things and take pictures of really cool things, but not write about it, you know?  Oh well, here’s to trying to fix that.  Starting now.  So onward we go!

Monday

We were starting a new unit in math this past week, so the warm-ups were no longer addition and subtraction.  This one is connected to some essential questions we will be chewing on throughout the unit, as well as serving as a way for me to know with what background knowledge everyone is starting.

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Tuesday

Another essential question from our unit…

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Wednesday

This pic is obviously NOT a math warm-up but is instead a view of where we were on this particular morning.  I sometimes use our warm-up routine as a way to make plans for our day, or to highlight a goal that we will all be working on together.  This was related to the work we were doing last week with remembering to focus on caring for others rather than just ourselves first.

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Back on track with measurement.  🙂

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This last one isn’t a math warm-up, nor do I remember what day it’s from, but it was a great example of how math happens all the time in our room!  Oh, and it used skills we had just learned in our last unit, so it was great practice.  We were starting a new chapter book (Thanksgiving on Thursday by Mary Pope Osborne–a Magic Treehouse book), and were interested in knowing when the first Thanksgiving took place.  We figured out we could subtract or count up to figure it out.  We decided to use the Circle, Split, Subtract with a Number line strategy that we had learned.  It worked! 🙂 And….Thanksgiving started a long time ago. 🙂

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Whew!  It feels good to be back in the blogging game again. 🙂  Thanks for coming back to read!