12/18-12/22

Have a wonderful Christmas break! May you find peace and rest in the joy of the newborn Christ the King!

School will resume on Thursday, January 4th for a short two day school week.

When we return on Thursday, we will be reviewing types of sentences, subjects, and predicates. We will be working on a 5 paragraph writing project about our Christmas breaks. We will also be reviewing our math concepts.





We had a busy, but very exciting week in 2nd grade!

Mrs. Helmkamp came in to our classroom to teach us another lesson about coding. 

At the Geography Bee

Enjoying their Christmas books during our AR 2nd Quarter Celebration

AR Celebration

Designing Christmas trees out of tangram shape tiles

In Social Studies, we learned about factories. Our classroom became a paper chain factory. Our classroom was able to produce a much bigger chain working together than working by ourselves!

POLAR EXPRESS DAY!

To start off our journey to the North Pole, we surveyed our friends

And asked all sorts of questions,

Like, do you like marshmallows in your hot chocolate?

After that, we got into discussion groups and discussed all sorts of questions

Such as, What does mysterious mean to you?

And What do you know about the North and South Poles?

Then, we wrote stories about Santa

We then enjoyed a snack of donut holes and hot chocolate!

We played Christmas games during center time, like tic-tac-toe

A dice game with a Christmas tree,

And making Christmas cards

To finish off our journey, we watched the movie and relaxed. We had a great day!

12/11-12/15

Looking Ahead to Next Week:
Memory: Advent Parts
Spelling: 2nd Quarter High Frequency Words. We will have our test over the 25 words on Friday morning.
say, great, where, help, through, much, before, line, right, too, means, old, any, same, tell, boy, following, came, want, show, also, around, farm, three, small
Grammar: Alphabetical Order
Reading: Review
Math: We will be continuing to practice our 100 addition facts and review topics we've learned so far this year. No test next week.
Social Studies: Christmas Around the World


Important News and Information:
-Our Advent Service is on Wednesday! We will have two services--10am and 7pm. Please have students wear their regular school uniforms for the 10 am school service, and church clothes for the evening service. Meet at 6:50pm in the church basement before the 7pm service.
-Please make sure that you have filled out the church attendance sheet in your child's homework folder. I will be taking the final count of these to put on the grade cards
-Last day to take AR tests this quarter is on Wednesday.
-There is information in homework folders about Polar Express Day! This very special day is coming up on Thursday! Please let me know if you have any questions after looking at the informational sheet.
-We will dismiss at noon on Friday for Christmas Break. School will resume on Thursday, Jan. 4th.

-Our chapel offerings this school year have been going to Friends of Kids with Cancer. For our Christmas service project, our class will pair up with Mrs. Smith's class to collect items for an 8 year old girl named Riley. Riley recently lost her sister to cancer. Any gifts provided should be wrapped and labeled. All gifts are due on Dec. 18th.
       Items Riley is asking for this year:
                 -gift cards to restaurants and grocery stores
                 -clothes in size 9, shoes in size 3.
                 -bike helmet
                 -fluffy bean bag chair
                 -gift card to make a blanket with a picture collage of her sister
                 -a bed spread for her room (her room is Paris themed)
                 -Riley's favorite color is pink and bright colors, she loves angels because of her sister getting her wings, she also loves dragonflies

-You are invited to join us for a 2nd Grade Milestone Class!

Zion Lutheran Church believes God calls parents to be the primary spiritual leaders for their children. Milestone Classes focus on creating and celebrating healthy spiritual habits and equip parents and families to teach their children.

The 2nd grade class will focus on the Lord's Prayer. Classes will meet on Saturday, January 13th at 4:15pm OR Sunday, January 14th at 9:30am in the School Library. Pick the class time that works best for you and your family!

To sign up, contact Bethany Andrews, Children's Ministry Director at bandrews@zionharvester.org or 636-441-7425 ext 254  by December 31st.

We learned about pollution this week and did an activity with Freddy the Fish. Freddy was a happy fish, until his water became polluted. Unfortunately, Freddy died. The kids had to buy tools to use to try to clean up Freddy's water so that the other fish wouldn't die too. They did a great job working as a team to try to solve the problem. At the end of the experiment, they understood that water pollution is harmful and that is can be difficult to clean up. 

While reading, The True Gift, the students learned tricky vocabulary words that they would encounter in the story. They worked with partners to match the words with their definitions, and then to apply their knowledge of the vocab words to other situations. 

Senorita Martin came to our classroom to teach us about Las Padasdas, a Mexican tradition. The kids were able to participate in an activity on Friday with the Junior High Spanish classes. 

12/4-12/8

Looking Ahead to Next Week:
Memory: Continue to practice their Advent parts
Spelling: all: hall, ball, call, stall, wall, mall, overall, rainfall, fallen, baseball
Grammar: Linking Verbs
Phonics: S Consonant Cluster
Reading: We will be reading our 2nd quarter whole class novel--The True Gift. We will be reading this book together and will be doing activities with the book throughout the week. 
Math: Our math lessons have begun the 100 addition facts. The goal with this is for the kids to be able to finish their 100 math facts in 5 minutes or less. We will be working hard on accomplishing this goal at school. If your child struggles with finishing them quickly, I highly recommend having them practice with flashcards or with a fact app.
Science: We will be learning about pollution and how it affects our natural resources and our world. We will have a test over pollution on Wednesday with a study guide sent home on Monday.
Social Studies: We will learn about factories
Writing: Write to persuade

Important News and Information:
-We will begin practicing for our Advent service next week. Because of our Advent practice schedule, the kids will not have math homework every evening...it will depend on what we get to during the school day. 
-Reminder that the last day to take AR tests this quarter will be Wednesday, Dec. 20th. 
-1st-2nd grade Advent service will be at 10am and 7pm on Wednesday, Dec. 20th. 
-Our chapel offerings this school year have been going to Friends of Kids with Cancer. For our Christmas service project, our class will pair up with Mrs. Smith's class to collect items for an 8 year old girl named Riley. Riley recently lost her sister to cancer. Any gifts provided should be wrapped and labeled. All gifts are due on Dec. 18th.
       Items Riley is asking for this year:
                 -gift cards to restaurants and grocery stores
                 -clothes in size 9, shoes in size 3.
                 -bike helmet
                 -fluffy bean bag chair
                 -gift card to make a blanket with a picture collage of her sister
                 -a bed spread for her room (her room is Paris themed)
                 -Riley's favorite color is pink and bright colors, she loves angels because of her sister getting her wings, she also loves dragonflies

-Kids Helping Kids –

The fifth graders are trying to make a difference for one family whose 5 year old daughter is diagnosed with cancer. The kids will be selling hot chocolate and to raise money to buy Christmas gifts for the family of 7. Their goal is to be able to buy 3 gifts per child. To help reach their goal they will be selling hot chocolate on Tuesday and Wednesday next week after lunch. You can buy a cup for $1 before heading out for noon recess. Help us raise money while also staying warm.  

The kids made symmetrical Christmas trees and splattered painted them to give the appearance of a snowy night.

To review irregular past tense verbs, each student got a notecard with the present tense or past tense verb written on it. Then they had to find their match!

Our scientists made observations over the three types of soil based on their sense of touch and sight

In Religion, we talked about how our hearts are naturally filled with yucky sin. We then talked about how Jesus makes those yucky hearts clean with his death and resurrection. "Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me."

The 3rd group of kids were able to work with Bob the robot this week. 

11/27-12/1

Looking Ahead to Next Week:
Memory: Advent Parts: Your child's part for our Advent service is in their homework folders today. They need to have their part memorized for their memory grade this coming week. I will take this for a grade on Friday.
Spelling: ing/ink: bring, sing, wing, fling, string, link, drink, pink, think, shrink
Phonics: Review of Long Vowel Teams
Grammar: Irregular Past Tense Verbs
Reading: Protagonist and Antagonist
Math: Test Wednesday
Science: We will be finishing up our natural resources unit with a pic collage project. We will briefly talk about soil and then will begin a unit on pollution.
Writing: Write to Persuade

Important News and Information:
-Our chapel offerings this school year have been going to Friends of Kids with Cancer. For our Christmas service project, our class will pair up with Mrs. Smith's class to collect items for an 8 year old girl named Riley. Riley recently lost her sister to cancer. Any gifts provided should be wrapped and labeled. All gifts are due on Dec. 18th.
       Items Riley is asking for this year:
                 -gift cards to restaurants and grocery stores
                 -clothes in size 9, shoes in size 3.
                 -bike helmet
                 -fluffy bean bag chair
                 -gift card to make a blanket with a picture collage of her sister
                 -a bed spread for her room (her room is Paris themed)
                 -Riley's favorite color is pink and bright colors, she loves angels because of her sister getting her wings, she also loves dragonflies

-2nd Grade Advent Service will take place on Wednesday, Dec. 20th at 10 am and at 7pm in the church sanctuary. Each child has a speaking part which will take the place of their memory work for the next two weeks. This part is in their homework folders.

-Last day for AR tests for 2nd quarter is Wednesday, Dec. 20th.

In grammar this week, we learned about -ed, the time traveling ending that makes words go to the past. We worked with partners one morning to sort different past tense words by the sound the -ed makes (either /t/, /d/, or /ed/)

We learned about different types of rocks and observed their different properties. The kids then compared and contrasted the various types of rocks they observed. 

In math, we used geoboards to talk about polygons and the number of angels each type of polygon had.

During one of our brainbreaks this week, we did a yoga deep breathing activity

When they were finished, the geologists got to eat their rocks too:)

Geologists were at work removing the "minerals" from the "rocks"

The second group of students were able to work with Mrs. Helmkamp this week coding our little robot!