A Wonderful Start to Grade 2!

We have had a wonderful start to what is sure to be an amazing year for the 2R Giraffes! 

We've spent the last two weeks getting to know our new classmates and our new classroom while we ease into our new routines. Here's a quick glimpse at what we've been up to:

We've enjoyed getting outside quite a bit to enjoy our playground

We've been working hard to build up our reading stamina each day and finding some "just right" books to add to our book bins

We created some math mystery pages for our hallway so our friends could use their adding and subtracting skills to figure out who each poster is all about

We've explored math manipulatives at centers and creating some pretty cool structures and designs!

We played the 2R version of "Duck Duck Goose" to learn about the two most common types of giraffe: "Masai, Masai, Reticulated!"

We learned about a giraffe's habitat and drew silhouettes of giraffes in the Grasslands of Africa

We also made these great Giraffe Portraits to hang out in the hallway!

We played "The Best Game" which was much for different than we thought it would be! We worked in teams, and everyone on the team had to decide who was the fastest, smallest, highest, tallest, and longest. After we made our decisions, Ms. Riley called up each cadegory, but then she revealed what their task was!

"The Highest" had to build the highest base-10 structure in 30 seconds

"The Longest" had to show who had the longest hair (it was a close competition!)

"The Smallest" had to show who had the smallest shoe size!

We also got together with our friends in the Elephant class to create our second grade safari! with hand print elephants and giraffes!

One of our favorite parts of the last few weeks has been our Paper Chain STEM Challenge

Each giraffe was given 1 piece of paper, 1 piece of tape, and a pair of scissors, and their challenge was to create the longest paper chain in 15 minutes.

Some giraffes cut and attached each strip one at a time, but others decided to cut their paper and tape first and safe the chain making for last. 

It was so interesting to see which methods each giraffe chose to make their chain--some even discovered that they could fold their paper in half so they could cut double the strips in half the time!

After our 15 minutes was up, we compared our chains with our tablemates and the longest chain from each table came up to the front of the room. 

...and we have a winner!!

Later that week, we did the same challenge, but this time, we worked together as a table to make our chains using 4 pieces of paper and 4 pieces of tape. We also added on 10 more minutes so we would have plenty of time to attach all of our strips.

It was interesting to see how people chose to modify their methods and everyone in 2R did a wonderful job listening to ideas, sharing tasks, and working together. Ultimately, the purple table came out victorious when it came time to compare, but all of the giraffes made some impressive paper chains!

Thank you to all of the giraffes for making these first few weeks so fun and exciting! I cannot wait to see where the rest of our year will take us as we continue to learn, explore, and grow together :)