Science: Building Bridges

Our second grade engineers have been busily building bridges in science. They built and tested a beam bridge, deep beam bridge, and an arch bridge to determine their relative strengths.

The girls have now been challenged to design and build a bridge which will span a 15 inch river, will carry a toy car, will allow a barge to pass underneath, and which will hold as much weight as possible. The pictures below show them hard at work on their task.

Happenings in Second Grade

In math, the girls are enjoying learning about area and perimeter especially since our last lesson included measuring shapes with Cheez-Its!  They also created a robot and figured out the area of the body parts.

     

  In social studies, the girls were treated with a visit from Mary Pickersgill and Elizabeth J.'s grandmother from the Flag House.  The girls were surprised to learn how large the actual flag was that hung over Fort McHenry. 

 

  We also had the opportunity to visit the the 6th grades' Baltimore environmental projects.  The girls enjoyed asking questions and learning more about our city. 

Art: Color Blocking Chalk Pastel

The girls have discerned which lines are horizontal, vertical and diagonal in their grandparent drawings.  They transferred those lines to pastel paper and starting to color in the shapes.  They are using a technique called "blurry to clear" to build their drawings in layers.  

Art: Space, Gestures and Relationships

The girls are sketching their stories using new skills of showing space and gesture drawing.  They can put their people into action poses with gesture drawings using ovals to represent the shapes of body parts.  This trick allows artists to move and turn the body parts to match an action like sitting, running, hugging, etc.  They are also exploring perspective and arranging their compositions to show shallow space and deep space.  They are moving away from drawing people on one horizontal line to moving the figures into the space.  Here's an example of the improvements:

Art: Grandparent Project

The girls are thinking about the importance of family and those events or moments they spend with grandparents or special friends. They are telling their stories through pictures paying attention to all the details like the 5W questions (who, what, where, when, and why) and the the 5 senses (hear,taste,smell, touch, and see).  Here are some art cards the girls dr during the brainstorming class.

 

French: Faisons du fromage!

Our cheese-making party today was a big success! I have to admit I was a bit nervous as I have never made cheese before, much less with 40 eight year olds. The girls were fabulously well-behaved and the cheese turned out to be very tasty. In between making and eating cheese, the girls learned a new cheese rap and how to express that they like or (politely) dislike something. I'm including the recipe I used today in French and English in case you get any requests to make it at home :). 

From the Library

Second graders have read a few loosely linked books that all feature lions. We started with Chloe and the Lion, in which the author and illustrator stop the action and speak to each other and to the characters in order to keep the story going. Ask your daughter what happens when the illustrator is swallowed by the lion. Next up was The Lion's Share, a Tale of Halving Cake and Eating It, Too. How quickly does half the remaining cake shrinks to a crumb, and how quickly does doubling means the elephant has to bake 256 cakes. Last in the Lion unit was Maurice Sendak's Pierre, an old favorite and another that involves swallowing a character. We also read the great story Sense Pass King from Cameroon. Ask how Sense Pass King got rid of the seven-headed dragon with just one arrow.

French: Fromage, fromage, and more fromage

Last week, we began our very exciting cheese unit. From now until May, French class is going to be devoted to the often moldy, sometimes stinky, and always interesting French fromage. The first cheese we covered was Camembert. The girls learned where it's from, what it looks and tastes like, and all about how it's made. In this unit, they will create a Pic Collage on their iPads about each cheese we discuss. Here is one student's Camembert collage. The next stop on our tour de fromage is Roquefort.