French: La Fête du Fromage

We had a wonderful time at our cheese party on Friday. The girls sampled mimolette, morbier, camembert, chèvre, saint-albray, and roquefort. Our two most popular cheeses were mimolette (which, sadly, is very difficult to buy in the US these days) and chèvre. However, I was impressed by the number of girls who liked the very strongly-flavored roquefort. Elles sont courageuses!

Our party was a "no English zone." The girls did a great job speaking only French. Here, they are politely asking for chèvre and roquefort.

After they tasted each cheese, the girls took notes on whether they liked it (J'aime), they liked it a lot (J'aime beaucoup), or if they didn't like it (C'est bon is our polite way of saying Je n'aime pas tellement).

Happenings in Second Grade

We have had a fun and exciting week in second grade! On Tuesday we went on our Baltimore field trip to The Flag House and The Homewood Museum. The girls enjoyed being in downtown Baltimore and learning more information about our country's flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.  We toured Mary Pickersgill's house and leaned a lot about her flag making company.

 After a picnic lunch on the Johns Hopkins campus, the girls were treated to a tour at the Homewood Museum.  We got to see what life was like in early 19th century Baltimore- so neat!  We were very lucky to have Lydia's mom as one of our knowledgeable tour guides. While one group visited the inside of the home, the other girls played old fashioned games on the lawn. It was a great day!

Today the girls did a wonderful job singing in the Spring Concert. They also had their cheese party in French class with Madame Shepley. 

Have a great weekend! 

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.