March 2-6

Scarf Day

Harlem Globetrotters

Today, Hollywood Brown from the Harlem Globetrotters visited us @ school!

Here's Coach Rooks and Hollywood doing a little dance routine with the basketball.

Hollywood did some REALLY cool tricks with the basketball!

Jalen got picked to be Hollywood's "helper." Jalen got to try some of the tricks himself. It was way harder than it looked when Hollywood did it!

Today's Art Class

Today in art we learned about Faith Ringgold, a famous African American writer and artist. She's famous for combining painting, quilted fabric, and storytelling.

Here we are making our "quilts."

Answer the Call!

Student Council is collecting phone books for The City of Decatur Recylcing Department. Send your unwanted phone books by April 15th.

(The class with the most phone books wins a popsicle party!)

HEY, KIDDOS!!! CHECK THIS OUT DURING WORKSHOP!

Alabama Severe Weather Awareness Week
Ms. Davis, our principal, forwarded these websites to us so we could learn more about Severe Weather Awareness Week in our state.
Take a few of your workshop minutes to look @ these websites. You might learn something that could help you and your family during a severe weather event!!

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/bmx/aware/swaw_2009/index2.php

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/brochures/ttl.pdf

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/hun/preparedness/brochures/tornadosafety_updated.pdf

3rd Grade Violin Performance

Today we were invited to attend a 3rd grade violin performance. We attended Mrs. C. Smith’s class performance so Eduardo could watch his big brother, Jesus, play the violin. Here’s Jesus playing below:

The 3rd grade violin program has been in place in Decatur for 10 years! It’s conducted by the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra. Each 3rd grade class receives 10 violin lessons; then they perform for their families and other students.
The 3rd graders impressed us by knowing the names to the parts of the violin, as well as the cords (?). They really knew a lot about the violin!! We think we might be able to remember some it for next year!

I know our faces look very confused in these pictures!! I think we were very overwhelmed! GREAT JOB, 3rd graders!! We can’t wait for our turn in 3rd grade!

February 23-27 - Introduction to Courage Unit

Sorry for the blurriness!!

Check out our camo!

CAN YOU SEE ME NOW?

CAN YOU SEE ME NOW?

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February 17-20

We're wrapping up our Look Again unit with I See Animals Hiding. Don't forget to wear your camouflage Friday!

Happy Valentine's Day from 2nd grade!

Today, we built mobiles...

Don't forget - we had to balance them and that was not as easy as it sounds!

..and we partied!

I have never seen kids so appreciate of their Valentines. I wish you'd heard the gasps and the "Oh, thank yous!" flying around the room! It was so sweet!

Look at what we're doing today...

We're still balancing and weighing. Today, we used equal arm balances to weigh and compare objects. We ordered the objects from the least to the greatest weight, and we weighed objects by comparing them to snap cubes.

We had to record our data in our science journals, as all good scientists do!

Don't forget to bring your $1 for our Valentine's Day party by Wednesday, the 11th!!

February 9-13

Finding Nemo for Fun Friday

Does Nemo use camouflage? What about his friends?

Since we've been learning about sea creatures that use camouflage, Finding Nemo (the movie) has come up many times in our conversations this week. So, we 2nd grade teachers decided to make a learning opportunity of our weekly Fun Friday event - we're watching Finding Nemo. However, we're not simply watching, we're searching for sea creatures that use camouflage!! We think we might even see some of the animals we've been reading about in How to Find an Octopus and Other Sea Creatures.

Balancing & Weighing

This week we started our AMSTI Balancing and Weighing unit.

Yesterday, we tried to balance butterflies on a pencil. It was pretty hard to do and then we added a giant paper clip to one of the butterfly's wings. That made it really hard to balance.

Look at Kelsey balance that butterfly!!

Ashley's working on it...

Once we got our butterfly balanced, we drew a picture

of what it looked like in our Science journals.Today, we used a beam balance and a fulcrum (new word for us!). We used different amounts of cubes on each end of our beam balance. It was even harder than the butterfly!! We got really frustrated, but Mrs. Davis was really proud of us because even though it was hard, we kept trying. We have some very self-motivated students in our class!

Here we are working. We finally figured out that we had to move the fulcrum,
not the cubes, to make the beam balance.
Can you see the look of surprise on Petey's face?

Can you see Nadia's perfectly balanced beam?