The Chinese Community, Friendship, and More!

Community: Kindness Puppet Show with Karen

Karen and her puppets visited class on Monday to talk about the power of words. We saw an example of how teasing words, even when meant in a joking way, can be hurtful and powerful in a harmful way. Ask your child how Sir Quail’s words were powerful for bad, and then good.

Social Studies

In social studies we are beginning to focus on a new aspect of Brooklyn – Brooklyn’s immigrant communities. We began this study by learning about the Chinese community of Brooklyn. First, students brainstormed the many different cultures and immigrants that we know about that live in Brooklyn and that are also part of the Hannah Senesh Community. We talked about the upcoming Chinese New Year and read the book Chinatown by William Low. Chinatown catalogues a young Chinese-American boy’s experience walking through Chinatown with his grandmother as they run errands at the market, the herb shop, the fish shop, and his Kung Fu class. Students compared their experiences of Chinatown to those of the narrator of the book, and imagined – through illustrations – what they would see, hear, taste, touch, or smell if they visited Chinatown themselves.

Writing

This week we kept on working on our Words Their Way sorts. With patterns like oi and oy sounds, long vowels and short vowels, we practiced recognizing these patterns and sorting them into the correct categories. Then we were challenged to write stories with as many of our sort words as possible- they turned out pretty silly yet creative! We also practiced reading and writing nonfiction books, and look forward to starting “how to” books next weeks.

Over the weekend, brainstorm ideas of what your child can write about for their how to books!

Math

In math we focused on the 5 and 10’s times tables. After practicing with peers, second graders had the opportunity to independently practice their multiplication knowledge by making a “Multiplication Monster.” By rolling two dice together and multiplying the two numbers, students discovered how many eyes, teeth, horns, arms, and legs their monster would have! Then they drew the terrible creatures. Some of us used dice that went above 6- even up to 13! Then we started our new unit on measurement, focusing on meters. Using meter-length strings we measured objects in the classroom and thought about which ones could be exactly one meter. We practiced using the words “more than” and “less than” one meter, to describe the height and width of objects.

Ask your child what their monsters looked like!

Yahadut: Tu B’shvat

To prepare for the upcoming holiday of Tu B’shvat we have been learning Hebrew vocabulary related to trees, fruits, and vegetables. We also added two new brachot (blessings) for fruit and vegetables to our snack routine. We’ve asked, why do we celebrate Tu B’shvat in the winter? We talked about how seasons in Israel and here are different and also read the book “Sammy the Spider’s first Tu B’Shvat” about a spider who observes seasonal changes in nature and also figures out a way to celebrate the holiday.