I'm moving...

As you know, Mrs. Davis doesn't live in Decatur. So, it's with a

that I tell you I'm packing my

and moving to a different school - one that is very close to home. So, I won't have to drive an hour to school, but I will dearly miss my BC family!! I will definitely keep tabs on you kiddos, so keep up your hard work in 3rd grade!

I wanted to give you the website to my new classroom (even though it's blank right now) so you can keep in touch with me, also!

Good luck in 3rd grade and stay in touch!

www.davis3rd.blogspot.com

179 down,

1 to go!!

This is what you'll see when the kiddos are set free on day 180!!

Ice Cream Fun Sundae (oops....I mean Friday)

Botanical Gardens Field Trip

We started off our day with the torch!! (It's a reward for getting caught walking nicely in the halls by our principal!) Good job, kiddos!

We're waiting to start our tour of the Botanical Gardens and the Bug Exhibit.

Here's a picture of the dragonfly that was in the middle of the water.

Look @ the huge ant!!! And the gigantic spider web! We learned that spider webs like this one (that look perfect) are usually woven by spiders that are harmless. It's the messy, dangling spider webs that are usually home to the really dangerous spiders...you learn something new every day! We did decide that we would stay away from ALL spiders, regardless of how pretty their webs are!
Faith & Ashley
Titauna in the "ant hill"
Dorien jumping like a grasshopper
The butterfly landed on Faith's hand!
Jalen's looking at ?something?
Kianna and Branelle are reading about the turtles in the pond.
Ashley in from of the big dragonfly planter
Branelle & Jasmin on the "ant hill"
Tomas, Ashley, & Jalen listening very intently
Our class in front of the big ant with our guide, Ms. Mary Lee

David running in the sunflower field

Jewel & Faith

Some of us on the rainbow

Some of us as Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Digging for fossils

Playing in the fog rocks

Here we are on the giant chairs

Worn OUT on the way home!!!!

The Water Cycle

This week, we've learned about the water cycle.

(I'm not an artist, so forgive my drawing!!)

Here's our Water Cycle wheel. Hopefully, your child came home tonight and explained to you the water cycle. I hope you heard words like precipitation, condensation, and evaporation!
Here's a picture of another water "cycle." Please ask your child to explain the process! That's been part of our homework this week - to explain the water cycle to someone at your house!!

The countdown is on!!!!!!

Cesar Chavez

Our story this week, Cesar Chavez, is about a Mexican American farm worker and civil rights activist.

These will be your last spelling and vocabulary lists of 2nd grade. This is the last story in our Imagine It! book, so during the last week of school, we will be learning about a couple of other cool things!

Next week, we'll be learning about the water cycle, and we'll be reviewing addition and subtratction with regrouping (we need to know this backwards and forwards so we're ready for 3rd grade). We will have math homework 2-3 nights next week.

BUT...This will be your last week of HOMEWORK!!!!!!!!! YEA, right!?!?!!?

Don't forget to sign and return permission forms for our Botanical Gardens trip Wednesday. Please return forms by Monday or Tuesday!!!! Wear your yellow school shirts Wednesday!!

Workshop

We have Workshop time during our reading block each day, and it's the kids' favorite time of the day. They wait on 10:15 all morning! We just wanted to share a few pictures of what we do during Workshop to let you have a look at another part of our day at school. Ask your child to tell you about what we do during Workshop. Ask what his or her favorite Workshop station is - I promise you'll hear either listening station or computer station!

(Israel & Maribel-these pics were taken before last week - I promise I've made David keep the mask on!)

3, 2, 1, Blastoff

This afternoon, at 1:01, we watched the space shuttle Atlantis launch from Cape Canaveral. We learned that the astronauts are on an 11 day mission to fix the Hubble telescope (which has been out there since 1990 - did you know it had been there that long?!!).

Before takeoff, the kids wanted to know why we were watching this. I told them that this was something that just didn't happen too often and it was an amazing thing to watch. After the shuttle took off and they watched it "fire up", and we could see Earth behind it, they were amazed! You should have heard the "oohs" and "aahs!"

GET WELL SOON!

David, we hope you feel better! We miss you!

Graduated

In honor of one of this week's vocabulary words, here is a picture of Mrs. Davis and her brother, Matt, who graduated from Faulkner University last Saturday.

May 4-8

Field Day '09

It's time!!

We've been working towards this week all year long @ BC! We've done so much to get ready: read our nightly passage, recorded and listened to ourselves read, read to our teachers countless times, worked on fluency, decoding, retelling, etc.

Now, it's time for...

Below is a link to the DIBELS website - you can see benchmarks (goals) for this year and the upcoming years.

ORF - Oral Reading Fluency (how many words read per minute with fluency and prosody (expression)

RTF - Retell Fluency (how well your child can comprehend and tell about what they've read)

**The goal is to be in the low risk category in each section (ex: 2nd grade, end of year ORF: 90 and above).

https://dibels.uoregon.edu/benchmark.php#3grade2

April 27-May 1

Notice that each spelling word has a silent letter!!

Soils (a.ka. - Dirt!)

Today, we joined Mrs. K. Smith's class to begin our new ASMTI unit - Soils. (Mrs. Davis has to go back to AMSTI this summer so she can be trained to teach Soils.)

We used a magnifying glass to look at three different kinds of soils: sand, humus, and clay. We talked about the characteristics we noticed about each soil and wrote about them in our science journal. We even taped a little of each on our pages so we won't forget what they look like.

After we studied the different kinds of soils, we made two boxes with layered soil almost exactly alike. Guess what the different in the two boxes is?

WORMS!!!!!!

Our homework tonight was to put something in a ziploc bag that we think we can use to feed the worms in our box.

Stay tuned to find out why we needed a box with worms and a box without! We just cannot imagine what we're going to do with those worms!

April 20-24

We're starting a new unit this week:

We'll be reading:
Study these words every night!

Hats Off!! (& Money)

Friday was Hat Day @ BC. We had originally planned Hat Day for the Friday after all testing was OVER, but since we were out of school that Friday, we bumped it to the next week.

Hats Off to Great Test Takers! They still deserve a hand!

We've been working on money this week. I was pleased to see how many of us are already pretty good at recognizing coin values and counting money. We're going to keep practicing next week to be sure we're money experts!

Please keep using the "money bag" we sent home last week to practice counting coins. That baggie is for you to keep at home for homework help and practice! Thanks for your help!

Money, Money, Money, Money!!

We're working with money and I need your help! Please work with your child this week on homework and give him/her a handful of coins to count whenever you can. We need to be VERY good at counting $ by the time we go to 3rd grade.

(And that's only 31 days + 1 summer vacation away!! WooHoo!!)

Just a few Easter pics I thought you kiddos might like to see...

Me & Coach Davis

Me & my brother, Matt
My Parents

Win