Goodbye April, Hello May!

Dear 2B Families,

Next week begins our last month of school together! It is so bittersweet. I've been reminiscing about the year and it's AMAZING to see how much these kiddos have grown. It's pretty neat to see! They are looking like 3rd graders already! I have been SO impressed with their recitation of Harriet Tubman by Eloise Greenfield! We had a little confusion in the middle about which stanza to recite but we got right back on track :-).

Attention 2B Moms: Our Mother's Day Breakfast (MUFFINS FOR MOM) will take place on Friday, May 19th at 8:15am in the MPR. We look forward to celebrating YOU ~ our sweet moms! There are many surprises in store for you! Don't forget to e-mail your mother/son or mother/daughter pictures to Mrs. Dombrowski and RSVP here *even though it says Mrs. Cook it's for all of 2nd grade :-).

Attention 2B Dads: Can you e-mail me if you're able to do a special project and/or help out on the morning of Friday, May 19th for the mom's breakfast? Thank you in advance!

Scholar Shout-Outs:
We had TWO birthdays to celebrate this week! Happy Birthday Joyful Jocelyn (4/26)! Thanks for the donuts! 

Happy Birthday Sweet Bea (4/29). Thanks for bringing us cupcakes today!

Volunteer Appreciation: Thank you SO much to our sweet classroom volunteers! It was lovely seeing many of you at breakfast this morning. If you couldn't make it this morning, please look for a card and a token of my appreciation in your child's homework folder! I appreciate your helping hands this year! I wanted to give a special shout-out to our two sweet Room Moms! Thank you for "LIGHTING" up our year!

Upcoming Events:
May 1-5: DIBELS Testing for the End of the Year
Wednesday, May 3: Spring Concert - See you all there :-)
Friday, May 19: Muffins for Mom @ 8:15am ~ RSVP Here
May 26: Last Day of School

Next Week in 2B...

Literature: We will continue to explore how the Ingalls’ family makes maple sugar and even sample the real stuff! We will read chapters 8 and 9 and identify what different animal tracks look like!

We will read a story titled Narcissus and differentiate between listening to another person and hearing what they want to hear. We will identify situations in which someone is not listening, and examine our own abilities to listen to others. Ask your child what our class came up with to the question: What does it mean to be a good listener?

Writing and Grammar: We had a lot of fun this week writing a persuasive paragraph! The class VOTED and ALL hands went up to persuade our parents to buy us a cell phone. Good luck with that one mom and dad...they did have pretty compelling reasons though! Be sure to ask them about their paragraph at home! Although I did tell them that when I was their age, I was just trying to persuade my mom to take me to Dairy Queen after school. Cell phones already???

Next week students will work on a topic secret paragraph project! We will brainstorm and go through the writing process to write a paragraph sure to make your heart all warm and fuzzy! 

Spalding:
Monday: serve, estate, remember, either, effort, due, dew, include, allow, position
Tuesday: ledge, claim, primary, result, appoint, information, whom, who, arrest
Wednesday: themselves, self, calves, calf, halves, half, special, present, present

Math: We are taking it WAY back to the beginning of the year! We will spend a day reviewing important concepts we learned in first semester. We will refresh our brains on mental math, multiplication and division, and measurement! Thanks for helping them persevere through the homework next week.


History: Our unit on the Civil War will continue through learning about important figures like General Grant, General Lee, and Clara Barton! Students will compare Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. We will learn how the war ended. You can ask your scholar to explain how General Sherman and his men helped lead the Union to victory; what happened at Appomattox Courthouse; and what happened to Abraham Lincoln after the war ended.

Science: Next week we will conclude our Biography unit through learning about an African-American doctor who performed the first successful open heart surgery! Dr. Daniel Hale Williams was a surgeon who helped set up a teaching hospital in Chicago. It was the first hospital in Chicago to have African-American doctors and nurses on its staff. ALL patients were treated well there. We have truly enjoyed learning about these important people in Science and discussing the virtues they each possessed.


Love,
Mrs. Dombrowski

Only Five More Weeks!

Dear 2B Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful long weekend! Ours was spent with family, a lot of eating, and some relaxing too! I appreciated the extra day off on Monday because my mom and I took my niece to the zoo and we fed the giraffes! Too much fun :-).

Can you believe we are at the FINAL countdown (did you start singing the song too? - "it's the final countdown...da da da daaaaaa da da da da daaaaaaa") of our school year! We are working on earning a few surprises for our last five weeks of school together. Thank you for reminding your scholar about making their best choices and continuing to work hard! I was SO proud of them for spelling out our virtue of the month! As a class, they voted for ice cream and a movie! Utilizing our latest unit in math, we took a survey on our favorite ice cream flavors! What would you do for a Klondike bar?

Scholar Shout-Outs:
Congratulations to John Paul (Friendship) and Alise (Perseverance) for your Virtue Awards! We are so proud of each and every one of our scholars for their virtuous behavior.

This is a picture from last week but too sweet not to share...I love seeing how much these kids take care of each other and show friendship!

More Fun With Catapults and Peeps:

More Pictures from the Pioneer Museum:

Upcoming Dates:
Wednesday, April 26: Happy Birthday Jocelyn!
Thursday, April 27: Healthy Snack Day (Protein)
Friday, April 28: Volunteer Appreciation Breakfast Social
Saturday, April 29: Happy Birthday, Beatrice!
May 1-5: DIBELS Testing
Wednesday, May 3: Spring Concert (5:30 for K-2)


Next Week in 2B...

Writing and Grammar: Students will be introduced to a new type of paragraph! PERSUASIVE PARAGRAPHS! They will be introduced through a model letter that someone wrote to Mrs. Smith, trying to convince us to get a class pet! Students will then start their brainstorming and prewriting on a topic they’d like to persuade their parents or teachers on. 

Poetry: We will continue memorizing and reciting the poem Harriet Tubman, ask your scholar what the first three stanzas sound like! 

Literature: We will read the sixth and seventh chapter of Little House in the Big Woods. After Wednesday, ask your literature guru what Laura did that allowed her to get away quickly from the bear!

Spalding Words Next Week:
Monday: terrible, surprise, period, addition, employ, property, select, connection, connect, firm, region, religion
Tuesday: convict, private, command, debate, crowd, factory, publish, represent, term
Wednesday: section, relative, relate, progress (noun), progress (verb), entire, president, preside, famous, fame

Math: We will introduce students to geometry! We will talk about vertices, angles, and sides. At the end of the week we will make 3-D shapes out of paper.

History: The students will learn about Abraham Lincoln's background and feelings about slavery. They should be able to identify the early battles of the Civil War and the division of the North and South over slavery. They should also be able to explain why the South wanted to secede from the Union.

Science: We will learn about a special woman, a nurse, named Florence Nightingale. She was also known as The Lady with the Lamp. Florence always believed that her life had a special purpose and that she was meant to help others. Ask your scholar how she accomplished this!

Love,
Mrs. Dombrowski

Field Trip Fun! Happy Long Weekend Ahead!

Dear Sweet Families of 2B,

What a happy (short 4 day) week we had! We enjoyed a Field Trip today to the Pioneer Living History Museum in Phoenix. Thank you SO much to all of our parents who were brave enough to chaperone :-). Check out some of our fun pictures...

Upcoming Dates:
Friday, April 14-Monday, April 17: No School ~ R&R
Monday, April 17: Happy Birthday Abby!
Wednesday, April 19: Assembly 8:00-8:30am in the MPR
Wednesday, April 26: Happy Birthday Jocelyn!
Thursday, April 27: Healthy Snack Day (Protein)
Saturday, April 29: Happy Birthday, Beatrice!

Happy Birthday Abigail! Thanks for the glow sticks today!

Next week in 2B...

Spalding: We will NOT introduce any new words next week. Instead, we will test on the words from last week and also review and practice several frequently misspelled words!

Literature: We will continue to work on editing our paragraph describing how Pa makes bullets. We will read chapters 4 and 5 of Little House in the Big Woods. We will compare and contrast Christmas in the Ingalls house with an important holiday in our own homes. 

Writing and Grammar: Students will review and classify all parts of speech learned, including sentences containing conjunctions and compound parts. Students will practice identifying the central narrative in a passage, in the story The Magic of Oz by Frank L. Baum.

Math: We will begin a unit on graphing! We will begin by making a tally chart and a simple picture graph. By the end of the week we will be interpreting picture and bar graphs, as well as identifying the range and mode in picture and bar graphs!

Science: We had a lot of fun in Science this week! We made Magnetic SLIME on Tuesday and created catapults to launch PEEPS on Wednesday! Thank you to a few special moms who donated supplies for these fun projects!

Our catapults in slow motion...

Next week we will begin our unit on biographies through reading and learning about a man named Elijah McCoy, an African-American inventor. Do you know the saying "That's the Real McCoy" and where it came from? Ask your scholar about Elijah's important contributions!

History: We are moving on to the Civil War unit. Students will learn about disagreements between the North and the South that resulted in war. Ask your scholar about the Underground Railroad.

Enjoy your long R&R weekend!

With Love,
Mrs. Dombrowski

Welcome April! Farewell to our Friend Keegan!

Dear 2B Families,

April! It's here! We can do this. Seven...more...weeks! We're all in this together. As I told one of the kids this week, it's okay that we are each at a different pace because guess what? We will ALL make it to the finish line! As it said in our Book of Virtue...

The fisher who draws in his net too soon,

Won't have any fish to sell;

The child who shuts his book too soon,

Won't learn any lessons well.

If you would have your learning stay, 

Be patient - don't learn too fast; 

The man who travels a mile each day, 

May get round the world at last.

I told the kids that what's NOT okay is that you stop trying. You need to continue to work hard and do your best! We will get there together!

Got Peeps? We will be doing a STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) activity in Science next week and could really use your help with donating these fun guys! Along with rubber bands and plastic spoons! E-mail Mrs. D if you can help :-).

Scholar Shout-Outs:

We enjoyed cookies with Keegan on Wednesday for his last day. We will miss you SO MUCH Keegan! We wish you well on your move with new adventures and making new friends! Thank you for being our friend...

We enjoyed our 2nd visit from the Phoenix Symphony on Wednesday!

Kids who clean?! Thanks Ryken and Thomas for helping clean up our classroom (without being asked to).

We hope you can come see our beautiful artwork for Fine Arts & French Night! Thank you to Mrs. Lacsa for displaying our work so beautifully:

We did a great job on Thursday helping our friends revise and edit their paragraphs!

Upcoming Dates:

Thursday, April 13: Field Trip *Remember: plastic throw away water bottle, morning snack, sack lunch labeled on the outside with your child's name and teacher's name (DO NOT bring lunch boxes...they will get lost)
Friday, April 14-Monday, April 17: No School R&R
Monday, April 17: Happy Birthday Abby!
Wednesday, April 19: Assembly 8:00-8:30am
Wednesday, April 26: Happy Birthday Jocelyn!
Thursday, April 27: Healthy Snack Day (Protein)
Saturday, April 29: Happy Birthday, Beatrice!

Next week in 2B...

Spalding: Scholars will have the choice to write their words in cursive or in manuscript for homework, students can also choose to switch it up and do some words in cursive and some in manuscript. I really appreciate your help and partnership in monitoring correct letter formation at home!

Monday: ocean, nephew, nineteen, noticed, notice, passengers, remained, retreating, style, subtract

Tuesday: tailor, thumb, trial, voyage, whisper, wrong, sometimes, engage, final, finally
Wednesday: Test

Literature: We will read Chapter 3 of Little House in the Big Woods. Ask me about the foldable I've been creating for this novel!

We will work on identifying the central narrative thread in a passage from a story called The Real Princess.  

We have finished our recitations of Lincoln (see my Friday Folder next week ~ 4/13 for your grade) and we will be introduced to a new poem next week: Harriet Tubman by Eloise Greenfield.

Grammar: Students will review classifying sentences and all parts of speech we have learned. On Tuesday, students will be introduced to a NEW part of speech, our SEVENTH part of speech: conjunctions! On Wednesday, we will review conjunctions and classify sentences containing conjunctions and compound parts.

Math: We will "measure out"/"pour out" our unit on capacity! Have your scholars been checking out containers at home to investigate their capacity? We will compare different units of measurement including a cup, pint, quart, half gallon, and gallon! We will discuss different scenarios in which using a specific unit would be necessary. Would you put cups of water into a pool to fill it up? Why or why not? We will work hard to solve word problems involving capacity and comparing capacity. We will review concepts learned in units 1-12, focusing on subtracting money and multiplication, and then on Thursday we will assess our knowledge of units 1-12.

Gallon Bot has helped us tremendously with learning about capacity! We've also been able to use "real-life" objects too!

History: We will review some concepts we learned from Americans moving west and then experience life as a pioneer on our Field Trip! Please remember to send your child to school with a LABELED sack lunch, a hat, a disposable water bottle and sunscreen.  We cannot apply sunscreen at school, so spread it on thick at home!

Science: Next week we will create a catapult and see how far we can launch PEEPS! Can you help by donating some of these items? We will need rubber bands, plastic spoons, and PEEPS! Please e-mail me if you are able to help donate any of these items. Thank you for your generous hearts!

Love,

Mrs. Dombrowski