Kindness and Finishing First Chapter in Chumash!

Community Building

This week we focused on our school value of chesed, or kindness, and read the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes to see examples of kind and unkind behavior. Each child received a cut out of a heart and every time they heard a character tease another in the story, they had to fold the heart. At the end of the story, second graders were told to unfold their hearts and make them as smooth as they were at the beginning of the story. Sure enough, we found the task impossible! We noticed that the hearts were all wrinkled. We talked about how even though we can’t see or physically feel words, they can leave wrinkles on our hearts and can still hurt our feelings. Second graders have been encouraged to use the language “That wrinkled my heart” when feelings are hurt, and discussed ways to smooth out the wrinkles. We were then challenged to write stories about acts of kindness. Second graders wrote about a character being excluded from a game, a character needing a friend, or even a character learning how to speak respectfully.

Over the weekend, challenge your child to complete acts of kindness. On Monday in morning meeting we will share them!

Writing
This week we were sorting masters! We completed sorting activities like making our own word search with our sort words, doing math problems with our sort words, or drawing pictures of our sort words. When working on our “how to” books, we learned that authors go back to their writing and “squeeze their brains” to get all the information possible about a topic. We looked back at our writing, and any page that needed more writing we squeezed our brain to add details.

Brainstorm “how to” book ideas with your child so that they have more topics when we keep on writing next week!

Math

This week in math we explored mass, specifically kilograms and grams. We learned that you use kilograms to measure the mass of heavier objects like a watermelon or pumpkin, and grams to measure the mass of lighter objects like a paper clip or a strawberry. On a balance scale, we were able to compare weights by seeing which way the scale tilted, and on the second scale, a digital scale, students measured the weight of an object in grams by reading the numbers on the screen.The second graders worked in small groups exploring the effect of adding and decreasing the number of items on the scale to find the right balance.

Ask your child what they found that had a mass of exactly 2 grams!

Chumash: Finishing Perek Aleph

We finally finished the first chapter of the Torah! We have been studying the 31 verses that describe the six days of creation, since the beginning of the school year. Students felt very accomplished to reach this milestone. They have gained so many text skills these past few months, while also developing an ability to look carefully at the text, think critically, ask questions, and express opinions. We celebrated today by watching this movie about the creation story. The students are so excited to move on to the next chapter where we will learn about the seventh day of creation (Shabbat) and the Garden of Eden story.