Holiday Traditions

During the month of December Mrs. Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars learned about different holiday traditions. After sharing lots of our favorite holiday traditions the students created their own google slide showing their own family holiday traditions. They also wrote a personal narrative describing their favorite holiday tradition. They brought this piece of writing home on Friday in their homework folders. There are two versions of the slide show for you to view. One is a google slides presentation and one is in a video format. Our final activity was recording a holiday message to share with you. We hope you enjoy these holiday presentations.





                                                           Merry Christmas!

Geography

Today we were very fortunate to have an excellent in school field trip. Second-grade students participated in a geography game show presented by Neal Nichols. Mr. Nichols combines his artistic talent with his geographical knowledge to teach students about geography around the world. After a whole grade interactive presentation, Mr. Nichols visited the second-grade classes individually to teach them even more about geography and drawing. Our very own Christina won the Geography Game Show by being a good listener and paying very close attention to all the facts that Mr. Nichols shared with us. He asked some very challenging geography questions about our world. Click on this  link to go the Geography Game Show website to learn more about this program. Thank you to our awesome PTO for funding this great in school field trip.

                    

Jacoby GHO

Today we were lucky enough to be able to have a Google Hangout with our classmate Jacoby. He is visiting his family in Ecuador for the holidays. Jacoby shared what he has been doing this week with his family. He went to a place near the equator where he could put one foot in the northern hemisphere and one foot in the southern hemisphere. He also told us it is 70 degrees and windy today in Ecuador. We were so excited to tell him that it was snowing in Middleton today. While we were talking with Jacoby Neil the geography man was visiting our classroom and he drew a picture live on GHO of South America for Jacoby. Even Dr. Carreiro came down to say hi. This was definitely meaningful global learning at its best.

Mystery Google Hangout

Last week Mrs. Kennedy's Super Stars participated in their first Mystery Location Google Hangout. Each class wrote a riddle giving clues about our locations. The classroom we connected with was an American school in Germany. The tricky part was that they are six hours ahead of us and as we were starting our school day at 8:30 they were getting ready to go home. This global learning activity sparked lots of discussions and questions about geography as well as differences and similarities among people living in different parts of the world.

Click on the link below to see what our friends in Germany shared with us.
Holiday Global Learning Questions Mrs. Langston’s Second Grade Kaiserslautern, Germany

Tree Decorating

One of Mrs. Kennedy's classroom traditions is to decorate an evergreen tree each year outside with edible ornaments for the animals. This tradition was inspired many years ago from the story Night Tree by Eve Bunting. The students in 2K were so excited to carry on this tradition this year. Thank you for making sure that your child had an ornament to hang on the tree. I'm sure the creatures that live outside will be happy to find some treats during the cold winter months. The students also used their predicting skills while we were reading this story. Many children had to adjust their predictions as we were reading and thinking about this realistic fiction story. Click on the picture to listen to this story.

 

Yoga

This week Mrs. Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars had their first yoga session with Mrs. Marshall.  Yoga is a wonderful way to calm our bodies and minds and who couldn't use that this time of year? Mrs. Marshall taught us some positions such as hero, tree, cat and cow, and waterfall. Our favorite pose is to lie quietly and do nothing at the end of the session. 

Global Holiday Card Exchange

Mrs. Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars are participating in a holiday global card exchange. The theme for the holiday card this year  is gingerbread. Each student created a gingerbread person using specific directions on the glyph. We then made a Chatter Pix video recording  special holiday messages. Our movie will be sent to the participating classes throughout the country as well as classes in Canada and Austraila. It has been very exciting to begin receiving holiday cards electronically from lots of different schools from around the country.

Random Acts of Kindness

Today for our random act of kindness we wrote notes to Mr. Sam. Hopefully, you are seeing some random acts of kindness at home too!

Family Holiday Traditions

During December we will be talking about different holiday family traditions. Our discussions will be a springboard for  a personal narrative writing piece telling about our different traditions. Please share a family holiday tradition on the padlet below. Feel free to add  a picture!