From the Library

After reading the beautifully illustrated Ahmed and the Feather Girl (ask your daughter how the girl was able to rescue Ahmed) and then The Fortune Tellers (how did the carpenter's fortune come true?), Second Graders have begun a unit on Kate DiCamillo's Bink and Gollie books. These two "marvelous companions" (ask your daughter about this) are very different from each other but they manage to come to Compromise Bonanzas over pancakes, brightly colored socks, fine fish films and talent shows.

Science: Baking Bread with the Little Red Hen

In order to learn about grains as part of our unit on nutrition, we read the book, The Little Red Hen.  The girls learned about harvesting wheat from the field, separating the seeds from the rest of the plant, grinding the seeds into flour and then using the flour to make baked goods.  They took turns grinding some wheat seeds using a mortar and pestle and discovered that it was much harder than it looked.  No wonder we have machines to do that work.  Combining ingredients and mixing the dough to make bread was more to their liking.  Each homeroom made a different kind of wholegrain bread: wheat, rye, or oatmeal.  Of course, the best part was sampling the finished product, fresh from the oven.  Mmm......!

Getting ready for our trip on the Oregon Trail

In social studies we are beginning our Pioneer unit.  This picture shows the early stages of our covered wagon.  The girls are bringing in items from home to fill the wagon as we prepare to hit the trail.  Below is a picture of what the wagon looks like now.

We are looking forward to our trip to Oregon.  Westward Ho!

French: Pebble jumping

After a nice, long winter break, it was time to review the French the girls had learned before the holidays.  We imagined that the classroom was a big pond (sometimes filled with des crocodiles!).  Using our vocabulary cards, we built a path of pebbles to allow everyone to get across safely.  The girls hopped from pebble to pebble by correctly saying the vocabulary word pictured.  We had a few people fall in on their first try, but it was still fun for them to get to swim back to their desks!

Art: Comparing Styles to Other Artists

To complete the Dramatic Landscape unit, the girls revisited the landscapes by Georgia O'Keefe, Arthur Dove, Milton Avery, and Wolf Kahn.  After a discussion about the artists' various styles, each girl wrote about the similarities between her style and her selected artist using the Scribble Press app in the iPad.