Last Minute Valentine's Card

Need a last minute Valentine's gift for your kids to make for their parents? Well here is an easy card that you can have your kids make! Doesn't take much time at all!

Looks just like an ordinary card made out of construction paper, right?

BUT, when you open it....

(love how the instructions were stated on the card cover)

You get a heart!

Pretty cool, huh?

Directions for making the card (also known as a peek and pull book) can be found here.

By the way, I used 12"x6" construction paper for this to get a good size for the card.

This is actually from Teacher Treasures. I've attended some of Mary Peterson's workshops and have also bought some of her books. Very useful stuff! I highly recommend signing up for her mailing list to get access to her freebie page (changes every month) which is where I got this idea from. :)

Five for Friday and 100th Day!

If you haven't heard, California is suffering from a major drought. Thanks to Mr. Groundhog and his winter prediction, winter finally came and so did the rain! We were stuck indoors the entire day today but I guess I can't complain since we need the rain. :)

Anyways, time for Five for Friday!

We finished learning about fractions this week including this fun activity with our names! Thanks Saddle Up For 2nd Grade!

Common Core is all about academic discussion. Have you been told to do number talks in your class? We have and the kids are doing great! It feels good to see the kids using the strategies I taught them and also come up with some of their own. :)

We also had an academic discussion about fractions that represent one whole. First, I drew a rectangle and divided it into three equal parts. Then I shaded one part at a time, stopping to ask the class what fraction was shaded each time. When we reached 3/3 another student raised his hand to say that it's also one whole. I saw this as a great opportunity to have the kids discuss whether they were equal. They did a partner share first, then we did a class vote. The class was split pretty evenly about whether they were the same or not. Then I had the students share their thoughts with the whole class (the writing in purple were notes I took from the discussion). After that discussion the class voted again and just about everyone agreed that it was the same! I was very impressed and proud of my kiddos! Too bad the principal wasn't around to see it. ;)

Centers on Wednesday included some groundhog synonyms...

...dictionary skills (looking up vocabulary words from our shared reading)...

...reading Scholastic News...

By the way, these "ticket holders" are AWESOME, especially if you want to save paper during centers time. I tried using laminated paper last time but we still had some difficulty with erasing the white board markers. These holders happened to be on sale and were being advertised on Surviving a Teacher's Salary, so I thought I'd give it a try. 

They work really well and the white board markers wipe right off! Click the link below check them out on Amazon. Looks like they are on sale again so now is the time to buy them. I think I might just buy myself another pack! :)

C-Line Stitched Shop Ticket Holder, Assorted Neon Colors, 9 x 12 Inches, 10 per Pack (43920)

Today is the 100th day of school! Hooray!

We don't really celebrate the 100th day in second grade (at least that's what I was told) but I still found a way to slip in some fun math activities relating to 100. My favorite was giving the kids 100 imaginary dollars to buy books from Scholastic. I even gave them calculators to use (which is VERY exciting in second grade). They had lots of fun with it and no one went over $100!

Some kids took it seriously (probably because I told them that maybe they can convince their parents to get some books for them after they have shown their hard work) and were very selective about their book choices because they didn't want their parents to spend too much money on them. So adorable. :)

Finally, we ended today making valentines for our kinder buddies.

It's Currently...February!

Did we really just say good-bye to January? I thought we had some more time. February is one of the busiest months of school in terms of celebrations and events. Our 100th day is next Friday...Valentine's Day is the week after (we also have a field trip that week)...and then we have our school's oratorical festival for Black History month. For the shortest month of the year, there is so much to do!

First day of February also means it's time to link up with Farley's February Currently! :)

Did you figure out which ones are my truths? 

1. I LOVE chocolate....FIB! I'm one of those few people out there who would prefer fruit-flavored candy over chocolate. I do get occasional chocolate cravings though. However, after a bite or two of chocolate, I am done.

That means the other two are truths!

I most definitely cannot handle caffeine at all. Coffee makes me jittery and strong caffeinated tea keeps me up all night if I drink it in the afternoons. Lastly, I did play tennis in high school. Took private group lessons and also played for the high school team for a year. 

Alright, I'm off to enjoy this lovely weather. It's nice and sunny outside (us Californians are so spoiled, I know). Need to get some Vitamin D to help get rid of this cold! :)

Five for Friday

Thank goodness this was a short week (PD day today). I managed to catch a cold on Sunday so this week, you can imagine was pretty under the weather. Even took a half day on Tuesday to go see the doctor's (which rarely happens). That's how bad it was. Not fully recovered yet, but at least the fever is gone. :)

We finished our "Be An Expert" presentations this week (students had to become an expert on a topic relating to the pre-historic era and present it to their class). I was very very impressed with some of the presentations! I could definitely tell who were really experts and who weren't. I especially loved the presentations that included some audience participation (asking the audience questions to answer) and/or examples to share with the class.

Thursday was our school's Lunar New Year celebration. I started my Lunar New Year activities on Wednesday, starting with my newest product, learning how to write 3-digit numbers in Chinese!

Another fun activity also relating to math. This time, the students had 2 minutes to use chopsticks to transfer as many candy pieces from the plate to their paper towel as they could. Then they had to fill out a math worksheet using what they were able to pick up as their data.

Most of the kids weren't able to use the chopsticks correctly to pick the candy up. It was interesting to see the strategies they used to get the candies over to the paper towels.

  

Lovely candy art

Thursday was our all school Lunar New Year Parade. I was able to get a professional lion dance group to come and perform too! :)

Today was a PD day. No students, but still had to work. Our district decided to suddenly implement some Common Core curriculum units that they created and want us to use it starting NEXT WEEK! 

Yea I'm not sure how that is going to happen since I still have two units from our old pacing guide that I still have to teach before teaching these new units. @@ 

It will work out somehow...