Last Day of School!

The excitement is high as we end the school year!  Today our class decorated bags and filled them with their school work from the year!  We also wrote about what we enjoyed in second grade and what we want to learn next year.  In math, we played a game called "Jellyfish Add" and went on the Study Island website.  Tomorrow we'll complete our "Memory Books" and enjoy the school celebrations!  Hope you can join us for the Davis Awards at 10:30 and the 12:00 Simonds Cook-Out!

It's been my pleasure to have worked with your child in second grade this year.  Thank you for your support at home!  It's wonderful to have seen their progress this year.  Have a fun-filled summer!

Best wishes,
Mrs. Mingarelli

Step Up Day!

It was certainly an exciting Friday with Step Up Day!  This morning students each wrote letters to their third grade teachers to share about their interests, hobbies, learning goals, and how they learn best in school.  These were passed along to their new teachers at Step Up Day!  A letter will come home today confirming their next year's teacher.

Today we also wrote thank you cards to our classroom/school volunteers, Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Asher.

Yesterday first and second grade students experienced four wonderful presentations for Career Day!  We learned about being a civil engineer, Spanish teacher, land surveyor, and a member of the military. A big thanks to Senor Dunn for teaching us some great Spanish songs!

Career Day tied in nicely to our current social studies unit about community!  We're learning about urban and rural communities, community helpers, and places in the community.

Our class has been very engaged in the online math games on the site abcya.com and playing the "Kakooma" app!  Be sure to have your child share about them with you!

June News

This will certainly be an exciting week at Simonds School!  On Thursday we'll have Career Day and on Friday students will meet their new teacher at Step-Up Day.  First and second graders will learn about four different careers presented by parents on Thursday.  Be sure to ask your child what they learned!  On Friday we'll write letters to the third grade teachers and students will deliver them when they meet their new teacher!  Look for a letter from your child's new teacher coming home in their backpack that day.

On Tuesday we'll travel to Squam Lake Science Center.  An information letter will come home at the end of this week about the trip.  Thanks in advance to all the chaperones that volunteered!  It will be a great trip!

Our class is finishing up some projects about the New Hampshire animals we researched.  Each student created a painting and poem about their animal.  They are very proud of their creative paintings and personal best pieces of writing!  We also finished typing non-fiction information books on Google Docs today.  Our new unit will be about our community!

The final stretch is here

Second graders came back from the long weekend well-rested and with plenty to share about!  This final stretch of the school year will be a busy one- with a field trip to Squam Lake Science Center, Career Day, Step-Up Day, and Last Day celebrations!

In class your second grader has been busy researching a New Hampshire animal using books and websites such as Google Kids, N.H. Fish and Game, and National Geographic Animals.  Each child is writing a non-fiction book to teach about their animal and we'll publish these later this week using Google Docs on the Chromebook computers.  We'll also write descriptive poems about New Hampshire animals and illustrate them using watercolor paints!  Your child has several pieces of published keepsakes that will come home the last week of school.  :)

As the year winds down, we will review math and literacy skills through many games and paper/pencil activities.  If you're looking for ways to keep your child's skills fresh this summer, the internet has an overwhelming amount of educational games.  Some ideas are:
ixl.com- a great website with tons of math and literacy games
Study Island- our school has a subscription to this great site
Also, you might want to check out the many websites we've used in class listed below.
Reading:
Starfall: Reading Games and Online Stories

Storyline Online: celebrities read your favorite stories

Oxford Owl: fun reading practice

Young Explorer National Geographic Online Magazine

Scholastic News Magazine (type in team27)

Math:
Math Games
Excellent Math Games from Greg Tang
Many math games from abcya.com
More Math Games from abcya.com
Money
Dolphin Feed Money Game
More Coin Counting Practice
Graphs
Create your own Bar Graph
Bar Graphs on ixl.com
More bar graphs on ixl.com
Pictographs on ixl.com
More Pictographs from ixl.com
Graphs on kidsmathgamesonline.com
Telling Time
Practice Telling Time
Telling Time Challenge Game

The National PTA has some great resources for understanding what your child will be learning in each grade.  Here's the link for the Parents' Guide to Student Success for Third Grade.

Second Grade Update

Last week our class very worked hard on our end-of-year math and reading tests!  Each student showed their best work and should be proud of their growth in second grade!  The whole school earned an extra recess tomorrow for their efforts in these important assessments!  Way to go!

In math, we are ending our geometry unit.  We've learned about 2-D and 3-D shapes and how to divide them into equal parts.  This week we'll learn more about fractions- dividing shapes into halves, thirds, and fourths.  Children will practice these through fraction bingo games, online games, and paper practice.

In other news, we started a new chapter book read-aloud today called Horrible Harry Cracks the Code.  Ask your child about the characters!  In science we continue to learn about habitats and each student will choose an animal to research more in-depth.

Reminder: Please let me know if you're interested in chaperoning the Squam Lake Science Center trip!

Today in Second Grade

We started our morning learning and practicing contraction words (are not=aren't, we will= we'll, etc.)!  We played some online contraction word games and practiced spelling the words on individual dry erase boards.  Check out the games here:
 Contraction Match Game
Contractions Games on Learninggamesforkids.com

Ask your second grader to tell you about:
*The Legend we read called "The Clamshell Boy"
*Their Shape Riddle Book
*What topic they choose to write about in Writing Workshop
*Learning about the forest habitat