Happy Valentine's Day!

We had lots of fun celebrating Valentine's Day on Wednesday!

After solving some conversation heart puzzles in math and curling up with some books we loved, we got together with the elephants to celebrate our love of science!

We created some paper hearts and used vinegar (a liquid) and baking soda (a solid) to create some carbon dioxide gas! 

After putting baking soda on our hearts, we added food coloring to the vinegar to make it easier to see the reaction and dripped it on top of our hearts. After it fizzled out, it left some cool designs!

After our Safari Time, we headed back to our classroom to deliver our Valentines. Everyone agreed that this was their favorite part of the day!

Each of the giraffes thanked their friends and teachers for their sweet cards and gifts, and enjoyed reading their notes and eating some sweet treats before heading home. 

Thank you to everyone who fills our classroom with so much love and kindness! 

Happy Valentine's Day!

A Toast to 2018!

The Giraffes had a great start to the new year with a short but sweet week!

On Tuesday, we had some fun with the Elephant Class when we created New Year's Toasts during Safari Time! We talked about how people often toast to others in the new year who mean a lot to them and during the toast, they celebrate the things they love most about that person. 

Here are a few of the people we toasted to:

We also continued our work with borrowing and carrying in math this week, and we learned a new math game! Seventeen was so much fun to play, and it helped us practice our math facts as well as our carrying skills! Here are the directions so you can play at home:

Despite the frigid weather, we were able to get outside briefly to begin experimenting with States of Matter! We learned that everything in the world is made up of matter, including the air around us! Matter can be a solid, liquid, or gas, and matter can change its state.

When we were outside, we collected snow to explore and experiment with in the classroom. After we got inside, we explored the question "What will make snow melt the fastest?" 

After brainstorming a list of ideas, each table group worked together to explore a different method for melting the snow. Even though many people wanted to try the same method, the giraffes did a great job being flexible and working together to test all of our hypotheses! One table put the snow in warm water, another put theirs in cold water, one put theirs on the heater, one used plates to squish the snow, and one used bodies to melt the snow :)

We discovered that out of all the methods we tested, hot water was the fastest method for melting snow. But many of us were surprised to see that the cold water also worked very quickly along with squishing the snow! We were also shocked to see how long it took the snow to melt on the heater, and we discovered the fastest way to melt snow using our bodies was to hold small amounts of it in our hands. We can't wait to do some more exploring with matter in the weeks ahead, and we look forward to a new year of second grade adventures :)

Happy New Year! 

Exploring Matter

Over the last few weeks, we began learning all about matter: solids, liquids, and gases! 

Last week we began our exploration with a Science Talk about Matter. After we talked about what we knew and came up with a list of questions we wanted to explore, we were able to do some exploring with shaving cream!

While we were having fun with our shaving cream, we were using our knowledge of matter to try and determine whether it was a solid, liquid, or a gas. 

Even though the shaving cream held its shape like a solid, we decided it was either a gas or a liquid because it disappeared after we worked with it for a while. It turns out both our liquid and gas guessers were correct: shaving cream is a liquid soap filled with lots and lots of tiny gas bubbles to help it hold its shape! 

This week, we had a science talk about another matter concept: dissolving vs. melting. We agreed that dissolving was when a solid became a liquid after being in a liquid, and melting happened when a solid was exposed to heat. We tried out a dissolving experiment with M & Ms, and we made predictions about how the M &M would dissolve in the water. 

We left our M & Ms in the water while we went out to recess and lunch, and when we returned we discovered the color was gone but the candy coating and chocolate were still there!

We chose 4 different colors to keep on the windowsill overnight to see if they would dissolve. When we checked them on Friday, the candy coating had dissolved but the chocolate was still a solid. We decided to leave the cups over the weekend to see what would happen with the chocolate. Do you think it will dissolve??

We will continue exploring matter over the next several weeks, and soon we will even have the opportunity to visit the other second grade classrooms for weekly matter experiments!