February Fun…and Learning!

Cold February temperatures led to indoor recesses. Those February indoor recesses seem so far away now. Here’s Shiloh sharing her k’nex creation made during indoor recess.

We congratulated Alexis for receiving her certificate for completing Addition on Xtramath!

On February 13th, we celebrated 100 days of learning together!

Here the C8 students are proudly displaying their 100th Day of School certificates!

The next day, on February 14th, we celebrated Valentine’s Day by exchanging valentines and eating yummy food. Here are the bags we used to exchange our valentines.

Here is Maddox’s project.

We did clay projects in art class using the pinch technique.

Mrs. Mullins chose some of our project for display in the lobby for the whole school community to see. The other projects were sent home with the students.

Shiloh’s is on the left and Timmy’s is on the right.

Here is Keviane’s project.

Kaylee’s is on the left and Kendall’s is on the right.

We did a unit in Geography unit in Social Studies. In this unit, we learned how to read maps and how to identify types of landforms and to locate the world’s continents and oceans. The students worked on world map posters and landform posters.  Here are some photos of them working hard on these posters.

Andrew using his social studies book for reference.

Some worked at their desks while others preferred to use the floor as their workspace.

Some students worked independently while others discussed and problem solved together.

The Red Sox table working hard.

Victoria, Ethan and Evan working on their world map posters.

Amber, Adrianna, Alexis and Timmy are hard working second graders!

Shiloh and Calista coloring their continents!

We sure had some fun times working and learning together in February!

A December to Remember!

December started with not one but TWO snow days!

Between a total of three snow days and an early release day for professional development, it seemed like December flew by.  

Report cards went online on December 13th. Hopefully you have all had a chance to view your child’s grades. If you are having difficulty viewing the report card, please let the school know. One tip….you should view it on a computer instead of your mobile phone. If you have any concerns about your child’s grades, feel free to contact me.

We studied extended our social studies unit on Traditions and Customs by learning about Holiday Traditions and Customs Around the World. 

The children made holiday ornaments as a gift for their families. The children posed for photos as if they were “stuck in a snowglobe.” These photos were cut out and laminated in a snow globe template which the children signed. I hope you enjoyed this holiday keepsake of your child in second grade.

The children had a great time making “Ice Castles” on December 19th! Thank you to all the parents who sent in frosting and mini-marshmallows for the ice castles. Special thanks to everyone who sent in extra candy and other supplies to make our ice castles so interesting…and yummy. And a HUGE thank you to the mothers (Mrs. Alshihri, Mrs. Barrett, Mrs. Chavez, Mrs. Cunha, and Ms. Demers and my daughter Catie) who volunteered to help make the ice castle activity so successful! I have put the photos of the children proudly holding their ice castles on the 2019-2020 student work page.

We finished December with an all school assembly to watch the Kindergarten holiday show and our classroom holiday party. 

I want to take this opportunity to thank all the families for the special gifts you gave me for Christmas. It was very thoughtful of you to think of me and I truly appreciate it!

It was a December to remember for sure!

Thankful for November!

It was a very busy month for the second grade at Brookside. All the children worked very hard on narrative writing. Here are some photos of them sharing their writing with a partner.  

This month students completed their post-assessment for the narrative writing unit as well as underwent individual Fountas and Pinnell reading testing one-on-one with me. But it wasn’t all work and no play. The broken slide on the playground equipment was replaced by a rock wall which was very popular at outdoor recess. Indoor recess was fun as well as evidenced by the following photo.

We had our October lunch bunch and celebrated their positive behavior and responsibility for the entire month of October. 

We also attended a PTO sponsored anti-bullying assembly with the rest of the primary grades. Andrew and Manes were chosen by the presenter to participate!

We had our Parent-Teacher conferences on the 20th of this month. Thank you to all the parents and guardians who took the time to attend Parent-Teacher conferences. It was so nice to be able to discuss your child’s progress with you.

In addition, we had our Grandparent (or Special Visitor) Visit! We met in the cafeteria and spent time working on a thankful craft and sharing some breakfast foods. I took photos of each child with their special guest that will be included in their second grade memory book we are making.

On the half day before Thanksgiving, we were back in the cafeteria again for our Ancestor Feast as the culminating event of our Traditions and Customs social studies unit. Most of the family sent in a sample of a food from their heritage or country their ancestors came from. The children were excited to try the wide variety of ethnic foods we had to share. Thank you to every family who contributed food and special thanks to the parents (and my daughter Catie) who came in to help set up this fantastic feast. If you would like to see the wide range of delicious foods that were sent in, there are additional photos on our  2019-2020 student work page. 

This November truly was a month to remember!

Happy Halloween!

Brookside WON this year!

We didn’t let a rainy day spoil our Halloween celebration! The students were greeted by the Brookside faculty and staff dressed up as Disney characters.

The second grade and Mrs. Mullins are having a cheery day!

Thank you to all the families who donated treats for our party. Special thanks to Maddox and his mom for the awesome treat bags!  After celebrating in our classroom, we joined the rest of the school for the Halloween Parade in the cafeteria! What a fun way to end the month of October!

March Madness!

Our wonderful PTO made this awesome bulletin board!

We started off the month of March with our school-wide Read Across America event. This is a special day where important people from our community join us to share and celebrate reading!

Principal Smith kicks off the celebration!

Roseann Sdoia, Boston Marathon Bombing survivor, was our special guest speaker this year!

Mrs. McCarthy, our Reading specialist, Roseann Sdoia and Principal Smith

Lots of special readers ready to read to Brookside students.

Showing the way for our guest readers.

The Canaligator and Rowdy greet the students as they leave the assembly!

My sister, State Representative Colleen Garry, read to our students on the following Monday as she was unavailable to attend on Read Across America Day.

This was the special book that was purchased this year for each classroom and read by each guest reader.

Since she had to come another day, Rep. Garry stayed extra long to read TWO books to our class and answer lots of questions!

But that wasn’t the only special visitors we had this month! We had a PTO sponsored storyteller named Tony Toledo come to share his storytelling skills with us!

But the craziest visitors we had were from Ireland!

At first things were a little unusual. 

Irish books were left out with Irish stamps as a bookmark and a piece of leather???

Mrs. Riordan’s leprechaun decoration kept moving to different locations around the classroom.

And it appears they had a messy tea party while we weren’t here!

Then they got into even more mischief! Check it out!

They stacked up our library chairs and hung stuffed animals, puppets and dinosaurs all over them!

Samil noticed that they stacked up our computer stools and topped it off with our globe!

We knew that we had to do something to stop the madness. Eight creative and resourceful children made leprechaun catchers to try to capture the little mischief makers. 

We can’t figure out how they managed to move all those chairs!

This is what we found on Monday morning March 18th! Those leprechauns not only weren’t caught….they had made a real mess of our classroom AND had stolen from all the leprechauns catchers! And then on Monday afternoon, our school secretary, Mrs. Treska, called our classroom and said that she heard a tiny man’s voice…and saw a small green hat… before he disappeared….leaving this for our class. And underneath the gold candies, we found all the things the leprechauns had stolen from the catchers!

Maybe they aren’t so bad after all!

Chloe holding the pot of gold left for us!

100+ Days of Second Grade – Part 2

Our students joined the other second grade classes in the cafeteria for the culminating activity for our Traditions and Customs unit which was a special feast on the early release day before Thanksgiving. They shared food made from recipes that reflected their family heritage. It was a tasty way to celebrate the diversity of our classroom. Thank you to all the families that sent in food for the feast and to our parent volunteer, Ms. Hibbard who assisted with the set up/clean up. Individual photos of the foods can be seen under the Student Work 18-19 tab.

Ann Biese demonstrating a breathing technique.

Johnny the K was very engaging and entertaining.

We were fortunate to attend two assemblies with special guests. The first was Ann Biese, an author who wrote the book “Worry Bee” and spoke to us about how to handle our worries and emotions. The second was the performer, Johnny the K who played his guitar and wore crazy hats to teach us how to be kind and to get along with each other.

Safety is important so we practiced our bus evacuation drill. The upper grade students assisted us.

We have also had fire drills and Alice drills this year.

We had a visit from Zero the Hero who left a treat of latkes for completing his challenge.

We also did some stations where the students worked on math and literacy skills with a holiday theme.

Gabriella and Devin working on building holiday themed compound words.

At this station the students were measuring holiday images with inch and centimeter rulers.

Before we headed off for the December holiday break, we made Ice Castles out of mini-marshmallows, frosting and lots of candy. Thank you to all the families who sent in the supplies and donated extra candy. Thank you to Ms. Allore, Ms. Hibbard and my daughter Catie for helping with the Ice Castle projects. Here is Sabella with her Ice Castle. More examples of their Ice Castle creations can be seen under the Student Work 18-19 tab.

We also made special snow globe ornaments that we sent home to share with their families. Here is a photo of some of these snow globes.

More to follow in Part 3!

100 + Days of Second Grade – Part 1

I want to share with you all the wonderful things we have been experiencing together in our first one hundred days of second grade.  We ended October with our Halloween Party and school-wide Halloween Parade. Unfortunately it was so busy, I didn’t get any photos of the students in their Halloween costumes but here is a photo of the watching a Halloween DVD waiting for dismissal after the parade.

Zero the Hero even got into the Halloween spirit by bringing clementines with “Jack-o-lantern” faces as a reward for solving his math challenge.

On November 9th, we finally got to go on our field trip to the Boston Museum of Science.

We arrived just in time to see the live animal show.

The live animal wasn’t just any snake. It was a python!

After the show, we were able to go to the stage and touch real snake skin.

We got to see and learn about  dinosaurs and lots of other interesting things!

Mrs. Riordan and C8 students in front of a giant T-Rex model.

State Rep. Garry was one of our chaperones. Here she and some of the students standing in front of an actual stegosaur fossil.

Davian and Jacob explore electricity!

Some of our C8 girls learning that a seesaw is more than just playground fun…learning about force, motion and simple machines.

Investigating a model of a one room schoolhouse.

C8 students learn about heat and energy.

The students had fun climbing inside this model of the waterways and found a statue of a river otter!

Thank you to all our chaperones!

The students got to be paleontologists themselves back in the classroom. They were given dirt from a dig site, magnifying glasses and identification charts to help them find fossils.

Quinton using the chart to identify the fossil he found.

Jayden identifies his fossil as Gabriella looks on.

Here are some more photos of students searching for fossils. Thank you to Ms. Allore and Mr. Santee for supervising our paleontologists during this hands-on science exploration.

A week in September…the serious and the silly!

We had a special visitor for Constitution Day, September 17th. State Representative Colleen Garry came to talk to Brookside’s second graders about the Constitution, government, the law, and so much more. The students listened, learned and asked lots of questions.

Our class also created our own class constitution and came up with five rules that we all agreed to follow!

The next day we had our first visit from Zero the Hero! Zero is a math superhero who gives the students math challenges and rewards them. Zero has been known to visit every 10 days. Zero challenged the students to use their imaginations to draw what they thought Zero looks like. The students did a great job on this challenge. Zero rewarded them by leaving a book about Zero the Hero for me to read to them and they also each got a life savor ….because it is shaped like a zero!

Here some “pirates” play the pirate reading game with Mrs. Nelson!

On Wednesday, September 19th, we joined the rest of Brookside’s second grade celebrating “Talk Like a Pirate Day”. Many of the students dressed like pirates. We read a pirate story and did some pirate worksheets.  Some of us got to play a pirate reading game. We had a jolly good time with our mates!

The Pirates of C8!

More December celebrations!

We made ice castles with marshmallows, frosting, and lots and lots of candy. Here are some photos of the students having fun making their creations .

Thank you to Mrs. Cowan and my daughters Catie and Molly who were finished college for helping prepare the candy and wrap the final masterpieces. Thank you also to all the families that donated candy to make this holiday activity so successful.

 If you would like to see the individual ice castles, head over to the student work page.

We were proud to have another student, Carter, become an Xtramath Superstar by completing his addition facts and moving on to subtraction!

Carter is a whiz at math!

We also celebrated good behavior with our lunch bunch!

“Tasting Day”

The Brookside Second Graders celebrated our diversity on the half day before Thanksgiving by having a ” Tasting Day!”  Most of the students brought in ethnic dishes from home that came from the countries of their ancestors. They got to taste many foods that they may not be familiar with eating. This hands-on experience was a delicious culminating activity for our social studies Traditions and Customs unit. Thank you to all the families that contributed food to make our Tasting Day such a success!

Amber and Kaylee discuss what they are eating.

Some of the C8 boys couldn’t wait to fill their plates with all the yummy food.

The girls were exciting to try some new dishes too!

Zachary tries something new while Sam checks out the box filled with cannoli.

Elizabeth brought in an entire taco making station. She’s not from Mexico but she does love tacos! So do the other second graders!

Please head over to the student work page labeled “Student Work 17-18” of this blog to see closeup photos of the students’ dishes that are labeled with the name and country!