The Pioneer Woman Came to Town

On Wednesday night I went downtown and met blogger, home cook, photographer, and author Ree Drummond.  In case she is new to you Ree Drummond is featured on Food Network weekly and has written several cook books.  But the real reason I was excited to see her was because she wrote some of my students favorite picture books.  Charlie the Ranch Dog and Charlie Goes to School are two of our favorite read alouds.

My sweet husband drove me and then stood outside with me in the rain.  In the cold.  For over an hour.

 He told me not to post this picture but I couldn't resist.  Look how cute he is in the freezing cold rain.  I had never been to a book signing before but he heard she was coming to town and I was totally game.

See the people behind me?  That is the book store she was signing at and it is FULL of people.  By the time it was all said and done there were at least 700 people that come through their doors.

This was her amazing cookbook that she was promoting.  Thanks to Ree I now have the details to Thanksgiving all worked out.  

She is VERY friendly and seemed to want to talk.  So I did.

And did.

And talked some more.

It was like a real conversation.  

With a real celebrity!

That's us.  Super exciting!

(Thanks Tim for finding me someone famous to rub elbows with.  I know its not like being in the bathroom next to Kevin Bacon but it's still amazing.)

The Mayflower Experience

I was so lucky that I found The Thanksgiving Story unit written by Monica Schroeder.  You can find it on TPT here.  She takes a long story about the voyage the pilgrims made to America and has the students act it out.  My kids had a blast a you can tell by the smiles on their faces.  I think they still like to wear the paper hats like last year in first grade. (I had many of them last year when I taught first grade.)   I thought they would be past that but they still love it.  

The students broke into teams to get on their ship to America.  Then the Speedwell sprung a leak and they had to return to England.  They loved looking on the back of their ticket to see if they were going to America or staying in England.  It was a surprise for all what they would do next.  I can't say any more about the day without giving it all away. You should really look at Monica Schroeder's project it is great.

Here they are signing the Speedwell log book to get on the ship.

Here are the members of the Mayflower completing their reflections about the experience.

The Speedwell didn't make it to America but their crew had a lot to share about the trip.

Deep in thought.  Right?

Lemonade Economics

For the last few weeks my students have been working on economic concepts. The students created their own company for our town.  We  talked a lot about what we need to make our community successful.  We also used those businesses to learn about goods and services, consumers and producers, opportunity costs, etc.  Then the students broke into business teams to build a lemonade stand.  I used the formate from the blogger at One Extra Degree.  You can get it here.  

I didn't get pictures at the beginning of the unit butI did get some of the signs they made to promote their lemonade stand when they made their advertisement.

After they worked on their signs the students made a commercial to sell their lemonade.  They worked really hard and not one student was disappointed in their commercial.  

Understanding our Country, in Second Grade

In our school district second graders need to learn about democracy and voting so I had the students break into expert groups to learn about the voting process and democracy in our community.

First they got into small groups to read the books I provided them.  All the books were nonfiction and had specific sections students needed to focus on when reading.  

After they finished reading they needed to create a poster with the main ideas from their book.  All posters included examples of democracy, the aspect of government covered, and how it affected our community.

The kids loved working in teams and getting to present their findings was a good culmination for the week.

Insta-Word

Over the summer I was fortunate to have my school district send me to Chicago to the SDE Extraordinary Educators conference.  While I was there (having a blast) I got to see Miss Babbling Abby from the Inspired Apple present.  

That's us... she looks great.  I look well, really tired in that terrible hotel lighting.  

Anyway, she had a fantastic presentation that covered a lot of information but she also briefly discussed vocabulary.  Knowing I was moving into second grade this year gave me a chance to look at my new curriculum and I knew vocabulary was going to be a big part of what I would need to teach.  So I purchased Abby's Interactive Vocabulary Notebook.   You can find it here.  

It has been an excellent purchase!

This is an example  her Insta-word activity from the Interactive Vocabulary Notebook.  

Abby has multiple ways to complete this lesson but this is how I chose to teach it. I usually only have around 30 minutes for social studies so I have to be pretty efficient with how we spend the time.

The kids and I read a book called, Being a Good Citizen.  Then they completed her worksheet which has three photo boxes for the them to show what they know about the word, in this case a citizen.  Then together we chose their best example and they recreated the photo onto a new paper with color, put #citizen under the photo, then put all the ideas on an anchor chart.  There were excellent examples of being a good citizen and while everyone was working they were discussing whether or not their ideas really showed supporting their community like a citizen would.  I this activity really helped cement the idea of citizen in their minds.  

We have since used Insta-Word for #democracy too with more great results, thanks Abby.

International Dot Day

On Monday we celebrated International Dot Day.  We had a great time!   We started the day by changing into our dot day t-shirts.  Just to get into the mood.  The front of the shirt has the students name in a colored dot.  Then on the back it says, International Dot Day with the date, 2T (it has each of the students names on a colored dot) and How will you make your mark?  

Then we watched the interactive story, The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds.  You have to buy it and it was not cheap but the kids liked it.  There are discussion questions you can have the students answer or write about.  We can also listen to the author explain how he gets his ideas for writing.  He is very inspirational and the kids really understand him.

Then the kids put their ideas of how to make their mark on the world on the backs of these cards.  Then we put the cards in a tub so the kids will be able to pick one out when they need a little push.

Then we discussed what is the one mark they would like to make on the world.  Really think about what they like to do and how they can make the world a better place.  Then they used the iPads to type up their plans and draw a picture to support it.  Some of their ideas are below.  Then we used a program called present.me (you can find it here) to show the student work on one side of the screen and then the students telling how they will make their mark.  It turned out really neat and I would do it again for another project this year. (I would post it but I am not sure that putting my kids on here is the best idea.)

The last project we did was a collaborative dot created on HUGE paper.  This was one of the creations.  They turned out really well and now we need to find a place to hang them.  The kids made sure they signed their work just the like Vashti in the book, The Dot.  Their work was amazing!

Class pet? I think not.

During the first weeks of school my new class listened to multiple stories about my favorite little sidekick, Solomon.  He is just about the funniest little guy I have ever seen.  This begging you see below?  That is becoming a regular occurrence.  He is a total showman!

Since the kids kept asking about me bringing Solomon to school I thought they should try to convince me whether or not we should have a class pet.  They gave me multiple reasons why we should so I came up with the next be thing.  Let me introduce.......ROOKIE!

Cute right?  He travels in the little cage Solomon fit in when he was a whopping 4 pounds. The students have a journal with instructions to complete during their weekend with Rookie.

So far one student took Rookie home and came back with everything intact.  The kids loved what she shared.  They went to a soccer match and for ice cream.  Now the kids can't wait to see who takes him home on Friday.

This is my first big map project for our mapping unit.  We have been learning about important parts of the map like a key, compass, title and color.  This student included a scale for depth.  I loved it!  This happens to be a very neat example of a map.  I am working hard to get my students to have more pride in their work so it will be a bit neater and easier to read.  

The kids finished these treasure maps up with some pirates but that is for another day!