Digital Drama Station

Students loved expressing themselves in the Drama Station this year! Students put their 21st century skills to use, collaborating to write scripts retelling stories and then creating puppets and backgrounds (using Power Point), to perform their dramatic creations. This article, Make Your Own Animation, will give you and your child ideas for using technology to create your own digital presentations. Most of the students are already familiar with Pivot (one of the suggested FREE programs available for a project like this). Pair this program with some script writing and you will have a fantastic and educational rainy day (or any day) activity!

More Sites....

These two sites should keep the children academically entertained for quite a bit!

Gamequarium Language Arts lets the children practice spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary! Lots of links to a wide array of games. You can also go to a more general area of Gamequarium for links to other educational activities.

Another fabulous site is Mr. Nussbaum. WOW! LOTS of links to an amazing number of games! I can't wait to share this one with my children! It has activities for students in grades K-8!

As always, have fun and let me know what you think!!

Summer Packet

I have noticed that the summer packet for rising 3rd graders asks the students to use Education City. CHES did not renew the "at home" portion of this site. The 3rd grade teachers created the packet and most certainly did not realize that Education City would no longer be available. I will look for sites that would be helpful to maintain skills and post them on this blog throughout the summer. Focus on finishing the paperwork and use whatever educational sites you find to supplement. As the parent of a rising 3rd grader, I plan to document my child's use of the computer although it will not necessarily be Education City. I haven't checked it out recently, but I know at one time there was a free trial available to Education City. You also may want to check out Study Island and take advantage of the "Try Us Out" section. Study Island is what the students in grades 3-5 use (and even what they use at the secondary school).

Having recommended those sites, I have found one called Carrot Sticks. It is a math program that provides practice with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division (all are free until the end of June - addition is free all the time). Students create an avatar and can compete with other students to quickly solve math problems. If competition is not your child's style, there is PLENTY of practice. The program assesses skill and moves your child to different levels based upon his/her ability and is for students in grades 1-5. Check it out!

If you find any cool sites, let me know so we can all take advantage. :0)

Olympics 2010

We have had a super time keeping track of our medals, writing poems about Winter Olympic sports, and finding participating countries on the globe! We have also read Hour of the Olympics by Mary Pope Osbourne to find out about ancient Greece and the first Olympic games. Wow! Have they changed since then!

To find out about the latest Olympic news you can visit the NBC Olympics site. This is the one we have used to chart the medals. What's new today? Post any information you find in the comment section. You can learn about the mascots for the Vancouver Olympics and play games with them. This page will take you to many places so you can find out more about the Olympics, both the modern games and the ancient games.

Are you interested in learning more about where countries are located? If so, check out Geography Games. Have fun learning more about our world! Let me know what you think by leaving a comment. :0)

Finally, you can check out all of the Magic Tree House books by visiting the official site. I've ordered you a surprise that is arriving when our book order comes. :0)

New Math Activities

Hey, guys and gals! These are the activities I showed you during class today! At the IXL site you can count models of numbers and write them in standard form; write the value of the underlined digit in a number written in standard form; write a number in standard form; and identify the digit in the ones, tens, hundreds place. You can also guess the number being described using clues. If you want to practice counting money, there are lots of coin activities. Just choose from the topics in the green box on the left side of the screen. The one about shapes looks cool, too! Remember that the site will only let you play for a little bit before they want you to pay to join. I believe you can play a few games each day. Have fun learning! Leave me a comment to let me know what games you try and which ones you really like. If you find something else that you think a classmate might like, let me know! :0)

Fast Facts Strategy

This post is mostly for parents....I was searching for a few games to post when I came across this strategy for practicing/memorizing addition and subtraction facts. It is a second grade objective to memorize the addition and subtraction facts to 18. Some of you use aaamath.com as well as other sites for practice. This seemed like a good method, too. By "ticks", I believe they mean tallies or some other type of mark that reminds you that they have repeated the fact fluently. Give it a try and let me know if it works for you.

Congruent Shapes

We have learned that congruent shapes are the same size and the same shape. Check out this game I found that lets you match congruent shapes! It's called Ice Blocker. Let me know what you think! Can you find other games that let you practice shapes?

MONEY!!

In honor of Black Friday, count some money! Here is a site where you can match money cards. Have fun!!

Professor Garfield

Thanks to some other teachers at school, I checked out a new website called Professor Garfield. It uses the funny comic cat to practice lots of skills. There is even a place where you can create your own comics! Make a comic of your own and bring it back to school on Monday, November 30th for a prize!! Have fun! Let me know what you like best about this site. I liked playing the trivia game against other people and watching the videos in Knowledge Box (check out the topics in other grade levels, too).

Happy Thanksgiving Break!!

Hi, second graders! We have not used this site this year, but I think you are really going to enjoy it! I use this spot to share cool websites with you and share information about our class. I even use it to post stories that you have written so others can see your incredible writing. You can use it to link to the sites I suggest or sites we have visited (like the R.L. Stine site). You can also leave comments. If you want to leave a comment, you do not have to be a member. You can select to submit it anonymously, but sign your name. Please remember to respect the feelings of your classmates by writing positive comments. I would love for you to suggest websites for me to post or share anything interesting about the topics we are studying. You can see older posts and use those to link to other sites on the web. I will leave a new post this week with some online information that I think you may enjoy. Since I know how much you liked the R.L. Stine site, I will include that one here. All you have to do is "click" on his name and it should take you there. Can you find any sites for other author's we have read like Gail Gibbons, Dan Gutman, or Mary Pope Osborne? If you do, let me know!

Rain by Ronaldo

Rain
Wet, splashy
Raining, splashing, wetting
Wet days
Raindrops

Thunder by Trafton

Thunder
Hot
Unneeded
Nature
Destroying
Electric
Roaring

Rain by Jazmine

Rain

Drippy, wet

Falling, dripping, watering

Rain, rain, go away

Water

Rain by Betty

Rain
Watery, wet
Dripping, watering, dipping
The rain is dripping on the roof.
Weather

Cloud by Henry

Cloud
Fluffy, big
Flying, soaring, hovering
Cool to look at
Weather

Sun by Samantha

Sun
Hot, bright
Warming, tanning, burning
On fire
Star

Rain by Morgan

Rain
Drip, drop
Splashing, playing, running
Go inside
Water

Poetry

Many of you have been excitedly writing cinquain poems. I am thrilled with your work! I would love for you to post some on here in the comment boxes. Click here to get to the worksheet we use to plan and write our cinquains.

We have also talked about acrostic poems. Those are the ones where you take the topic word and write it vertically down the left side of your paper. Each line you write must be about the topic and begin with the letter from the word. Here are some examples. Please post your poems.

Try out some others we discussed: free verse, concrete, rhyming! Write and post and have fun! Feel free to leave positive comments about another person's poem, too! Get your parents to write some also!!!

Disappointed

I have had this blog for two school years and I must admit that I was truly disappointed this morning when I saw that someone had left an unkind comment about another classmate. Many times this year we have quoted the phrase, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all." Just to make it clear, that goes for writing, too. Before you write or say something, think about how you would feel if another person was saying or writing the same thing about you. If you would not like it, then please keep it to yourself. We are a class and our job is to support each other and celebrate our successes. Please do not leave hurtful comments.

So you know how this works, I get an email whenever something is posted. Since this is my blog, I have the authority to delete comments. I will delete unkind remarks. I can also choose to turn off the 'comment' option, but I like the idea of you being able to add your thoughts about activities on here.

Make a Mummy

Today we read about mummification. It was mentioned in our read aloud book Clementine's Letter. We were curious about how mummies were made so we did some research. We made our own mummy! Give it a try on Discovery Kids!