First Full Day of School! (We made it!)

It was a fun, long day in 2nd grade today!  Be prepared for your 2nd grader to come home tired!  Note:  Some of the students expressed confusion about the yellow homework sheet.  This sheet should stay in their homework folder all week and should go home each night and come back to school each day.  I'll stamp it each day they complete their homework/reading/flash cards, and then they'll turn it in on Friday to be graded.  I hope this clarifies things!

We started off with a tour of our desk and a tour of the classroom so we could get acquainted with the important things we'll be using throughout the year. Then we reviewed some procedures and took a look at our classroom blog. 

Then we learned about each of the classroom jobs and the responsibilities the students will have throughout the year to help our classroom run smoothly.  2nd grade is a fun time of learning and growing, becoming not only more independent, but also branching out and noticing the needs of others and then working to meet those needs.

We got a chance to work on our morning work--language arts skills on one side and math on the other.  We'll do the first few together so the students can get the hang of it, and then they will start working independently each morning by the end of the week.  This morning work will come home on Friday, as it's in a packet they'll use for the whole week.  We will be doing this type of morning work most mornings, so we did it together today.  They'll transition into doing a page by themselves, and then checking it as a class, by Friday.

We also discussed our Purple Hand Pledge.  We say this pledge in the mornings, along with our pledge of allegiance to the cross and to the flag, showing its importance to our school.  The pledge states, "I will not use my hands or my words for hurting myself or others."  After discussing what this looks like, and what we should be using our hands and words for, the students take the pledge, outline their hand on purple paper, and sign it to indicate that they make this pledge.  These hands will be posted for the year, and we oftentimes come back to the pledge and discuss it as needed.

I also did an All About Mrs. Picker presentation so they could get to know more about me, beyond just what they see in the classroom.  The presentation ended with a game--since I'm an identical twin, I took childhood pictures of me and my twin sister and had the students guess which one was me.  Ask them how well they did!  (I usually get several wrong!)

We ended our day by starting our read aloud of The Tale of Despereaux.  Then the 2^nd graders got to go to their first P.E. class of the year!  Ask them what they did!

Have a restful, low-key night!