Happy Hearts, Presidents, and More

I'm finding out that this year, there really is no consistent normal.  While this week would be considered fairly routine, next week is going to be another crazy one.  But more on that in a bit...

This week we read Annie's Gifts, a realistic fiction story about a little girl who comes from a very musically talented family but finds out she has absolutely no musical talent.  Instead, Annie's gifts are her ability to draw and write poetry.  Some students are still having difficulty determining the difference between fiction (a made-up story) and nonfiction (a true story that gives facts).  Ask your second grader to tell you what each means, and ask the difference between realistic fiction (a made-up story that could really happen in which the characters act like real people) and fantasy (a made-up story in which the characters do things that could never happen in real life).  We continued with setting (the where and when of a story).  Our robust vocabulary words this week were stomped, sipped, entertain, except, carefree, and screeching.  We also continued with adjectives, and we spent a lot of time describing a lot of objects.  We even made a list of close to 100 adjectives that we are keeping in our language arts folder at school to help us remember to be more descriptive writers!

Next week will be somewhat different.  I will be out Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for a technology conference in Columbus.  The sub will be Mrs. Harpel.  The students know her because she was Mrs. Pennington's sub before Christmas when she had her knee surgery.  She also did my maternity leave last year when I had Brayden, so I completely trust her and know she will do a great job!  Activities next week will be a mixture of Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day (including the president reports that your child needed the can for), and adjective activities.  We will not be reading a specific story, but we will begin working on locating information in nonfiction texts.  We will still have a spelling test, and words will follow the oi and oy spelling patterns.  Words are:
join, boil, joy, soil, noise, voice, boy, point, toy, coin, destroy, avoid, annoy, loyal, enjoy, high, every, near, add, food
Challenge list:
destroy, avoid, annoy, loyal, enjoy, joyful, choice, foyer, joint, oyster, trapezoid, voyage, poison, tomboy, cowboy, high, every, near, add, food

Our specials schedule for next week will be:
Monday - music
Tuesday - computer
Wednesday - art
Thursday - music
Friday - gym

Also, please note that next Thursday, February 17th is a one-hour delay for a teacher inservice.  Friday we will have an assembly at 2:30 to kick off our next candy sale fundraiser.  Look for information to come home next Friday about that.

Just a reminder that if you haven't sent in a clean can for your child to complete his/her president report next week, we need those by Monday!  Thank you to a few parents who sent in extras!

A big thank you goes out to everyone who sent in treats for our Happy Hearts party this week, and especially to Mrs. Hosey, who was brave enough to volunteer to help!

Should you have any questions or concerns about anything next week, please direct them to Mrs. Myerholtz.  She can either get in touch with me or answer to the best of her ability.  Otherwise I will be back on Thursday and can return any emails or phone calls at that point.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!