2nd Grade Specials
Newtown Friends School :: February, 2016
Art
Second grade artists are still working on their Swedish Dala Horses. The amount of effort and care they have been working with has been quite impressive! This week we will be adding saddles and bridles inspired by Swedish folk art and will take another week for finishing touches like eyes, manes and other student driven details. That will leave us enough time for a Black history study that I am sure will bring us well into March. Students will be looking into the tradition, costumes, and performances created by the tribes of New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians and use them as inspiration for their own costumes.
Library
Second graders will continue reading biographies of artistic and adventurous people including Pablo Picasso, Grandma Prisbrey (builder of a bottle village), and Paul Erdos (mathematics).
Music
The second graders will be concluding their rhythm unit this month. They will be finishing up this unit by composing a short rhythmic piece for classmates to play on rhythm instruments! Our February composer of the month is Cole Porter.
P.E.
In physical education class we will continue to develop our physical fitness and work on muscular strength, core and cardiovascular endurance. Our lessons at the beginning of this month will focus on jumping rope. Students will participate in a variety of jump rope games, skills and challenges in preparation for our school wide event Jump Rope for Heart. In February we play a game called Flag Grab that involves running, dodging and defending, Doctors vs Viruses that uses the skills of running, dodging and tagging, as well as other tag games and racing games. During the month we will use the rock wall one time. There will also be a bonus football activity the week of the Super Bowl!
Science
Second graders finish discovering how the earth changes quickly and slowly. We finish the unit exploring fast processes of earth change, which include learning about the inner sections of the earth and why we have earthquakes. We will model plate tectonics and make our own earthquakes. Then we will have our eagerly anticipated volcano days. We end the unit by telling a story about our handmade salt dough landforms using the terms and concepts we learned during the unit.
Spanish
We have begun to dive into our personal description unit and will be spending the rest of the month working with this vocabulary. Students will learn how to give basic physical and personality descriptions of themselves and others in Spanish. The final project for this unit will incorporate technology using “Wixie." We have started adding questions about the weather to our classroom routine and we will continue practicing those phrases, along with other calendar vocabulary, each class.
Upcoming Events:
Thursday 2/11 - Noon Dismissal, Parent-Teacher Conferences
Friday 2/12 - No School, Parent-Teacher Conferences
Monday 2/15 - No School, Presidents' Day