Day 2 :)

And so ends day 2!

I am absolutely exhausted!! Every year I forget how young the kiddies are when they move up from Grade 2 - it always takes a while to adjust to the fact that they really don't know the routines, my expectations, what to do when they're finished...

Granted, we go over it all on the first day but the reality is (as you all know) that it takes quite a while for routines to become established. :)

So... on Day 1 I lost 4 children on the way to assembly! This despite the fact that I stopped the line twice en route, re-lined everyone up, counted heads and set off. It's not exactly a 5 mile hike from our classroom to the assembly hall but we were the only class that arrived 4 short - sigh. I had to go look for my missing ones - who I've now nicknamed "the tortoises". :) Naturally they think this is hysterically funny and told me that they were all very slow last year as well and they guess they haven't grown out of it yet! :)

What's this? Keep reading :)

Today we bravely ventured into centers! It was pretty good actually - they adapted surprisingly quickly considering this is a foreign animal in Grade 2 - and most of them finished the set activities within the time frame. I now know who my chatterboxes are!!

We had a very enjoyable time discussing our Dream House writing activity - things livened up considerably when I told them that I would be making the art project for the class cooperative brainstorm. (I now have to - somehow - create a Book House, made of pink books and a garden of book trees and rainbow-colored book worms, that is housed in a gigantic library! I'll post a picture of my feeble attempts at collage when it's finished.)

I love doing art with my kiddies - that way they can see that it's ok not to be good at something! :)

And finally - our new anchor activities are a great hit. Today I had children working on making thaumatropes (nice new word for them to tell their parents :) ) Roman research and inference comprehension cards. So far they're staying away from the Math - and judging by our unit pre-assessments I have a class of writers this year, not mathematicians. That will have to change!!

Here's some photos of my scientists in action - so far the fish in the thaumatropes have all been dead! (This is because no-one has yet followed the directions properly and put the two sides together correctly. :) It's all learning though, isn't it? )

Getting help from a friend - it's hard to do this
one-handed

Starting to write up the experiment

   

Spinning the thaumatropes -
do they work?

 

They worked quite well :) and the girls were thrilled with them. Some of them still have to do the activity but I'm really pleased with the introduction of my new anchor activities. It's certainly going to make school fun!

Researching the Romans - I love seeing independent
work like this!

Tomorrow will be our first art day and we are going to be CREATIVE and MESSY and thoroughly enjoy ourselves. :)

Hope everyone has a great Wednesday.