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Social Studies, Buddies, and More!

Social Studies

We had a blast with our first social studies lesson! We explored three different kinds of communities: urban, suburban, and rural. We read the book Town Mouse, Country Mouse by Jan Brett and noticed how the story and beautiful illustrations gave us clues into the character traits and differences between the town mouse and country mouse. While we listened to the story we listed the differences between the lifestyles and appearance of each mouse, and we noticed that the Town Mouse wore bright and colorful clothes while the Country Mouse wore simple clothes in dull colors so not to attract the attention of the animals in the countryside. The Town Mouse lived in a tall house, with a pantry and a cat, and the Country Mouse lived in a low house surrounded by trees and owls and crows! In the coming weeks we will be continuing to compare and contrast urban,suburban, and rural communities. We connected this book to our writing unit on small moment narratives, noticing how the story ending echoes the story beginning, a technique many of us are trying out in our own writing.

Math 

We began math this week by continuing “up and down” math practice, and adding two and three digit numbers where it was necessary to “regroup”. We were able to add numbers such as 438 + 49=?  We know that when your sum is greater than 9 or 99 we must carry or regroup the ones or the tens. Next week we will delve into regrouping bigger numbers, and practice regrouping in the tens place value and higher!

Over the weekend, try playing a 2 card war game, where you need to add both the cards and the person with the highest sum wins!

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Science

This week we reviewed the experiment from the previous session, and students demonstrated their understanding of the key terms evaporation and condensation. A reading of the article “A Snowman in July” encapsulated how water can change from solid to liquid to gas to water again! Second graders eagerly identified words in the article relating to these changes. The following session, each pair of science buddies did an experiment with a greater number of steps than previously. They learned about pure substances and mixtures by mixing and separating solids. The homework for the week gives them an opportunity to mix solids at home and make an edible experiment.

Ask your young scientist about the experiment we did in class with salt and gravel, and how they mixed and then separated the two items. They should include the materials: mesh, rubber band, small and large cup. Through conducting the experiment at school and at home, second graders should understand that the components of the mixture did not change — and that observing “no change” is just as important an observation as if a change had occurred.

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Sixth Grade Buddy Time!

Last week our sixth grade buddies came to our class to teach us the songs that they learned on their trip to Teva.

Sixth Graders Teach Teva Song to their Second Grade Buddies from Hannah Senesh on Vimeo.

Sixth Graders Teach a Teva Song to their Second Grade Buddies from Hannah Senesh on Vimeo.

Israel with the Shinshinim

Yaheli and Yuval came to our class. They taught us the game “Truth and a Lie” to get to know us better. Students said statements such as, “I ate school lunch today” or “I love football”. Rohan said a particularly interesting statement- “I rode on Noah’s Ark”. Ask your child which truth and lie they made up about themselves, or even play at home with your family! Afterwards we worked together to make a colorful map of Israel which we will use throughout the year as we learn about Israel’s geography.

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Art with Iviva:

We are learning about story-telling through a multi-step, mixed media art project. Starting by making masks inspired by the work of Nick Cave and his sound suits, full-body costumes, we used collage and even some hand stitching to make masks. Now, we’re storyboarding about the characters we created through our masks. Some of us are even teaming up to write new stories about our characters meeting.

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