In our morning Bible lessons we’ve learned that putting our hope and trust in Jesus is the only way to know for sure that we are going to Heaven. We’ve also been reading about an Old Testament hero who, as a baby boy, was almost thrown into the Nile River to be eaten by crocodiles. We’ve learned that when you allow God to use you for His purposes amazing things can happen. In Reading we’ve read silly stories like Julius and Dragon Gets By where animals talk and act like humans, and we’ve read fiction & nonfiction books about nature like Henry & Mudge & the Starry Night, and Exploring Parks with Ranger Dockett. In phonics we’ve looked at consonant clusters (tr, pl, cl, gr, dr), CVCe pattern words like (lake, made, hike), & VCCV words like (hippo and letter). We’ve also used a variety of decoding strategies to read guided reading books in small groups. In Math we’ve worked on adding two digit numbers, writing the same number in 3 different forms, fact families, place value, and base ten numbers. Recently we’ve been skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. In Writing, we’ve been learning the 5 steps of writing: Prewrite, Draft, Revise, Proofread, & Publish. In Writer’s Workshop we are learning how to take one small moment of our lives and describe it in great detail so that it stretches out into a whole story. In Social Studies we’ve studied immigrants, ancestors, traditions and legends, monuments, and memorials. Recently we’ve looked at why people should vote and how people get elected to leadership positions. In Science we’ve looked at living and nonliving things, and how all plants and animals need food, water, air and space to grow and survive. We’ve also combined many Science and Social Studies topics into one broader thematic unit on apples and Johnny Appleseed.

Apples & Johnny Appleseed
During the last half of September and part of October, the 2nd graders listened to or read 12 different books & watched two short films on Johnny Appleseed. They also read 7 books about apples and apple trees. They did this to research facts about apples and to find out whether or not Johnny Appleseed was a real person. We had a field trip planned for Sept. 22 to Blackberry Farms to further research apple facts, to taste apple products, and learn more about Johnny Appleseed, but it was postponed due to tremendous rain & flooding the weekend before our scheduled trip. That Thursday though, we still celebrated with an “Applefest” in our classroom. Thanks to the help and generosity of the 2nd grade parents, we tasted an amazing sampling of apple treats. We sipped apple juice & apple cider, & nibbled on apple cookies, apple bread, fresh apple pie, apple muffins, baked apple chips, & apple sauce. We even had caramel and peanut butter sauces for dipping apple slices into. We also listened to festive fall music and watched Disney’s Johnny Appleseed. We had an awesome Applefest! On Oct. 9th we took our rescheduled fieldtrip to Blackberry Farms. While there, we took a wagon hayride out to a miniature apple orchard to learn facts about apples. From there we went to Mr. Tom, a fellow dressed up like Johnny Appleseed, who was grinding and pressing fresh apples into cider. He told us apple cider was a very important part of many pioneer diets. Next we went to a station and learned about how important bees are for pollinating apple blossoms. We finished our tour by visiting an authentic log cabin and watching a tour guide make fresh apple butter by boiling apples over a fire. She later gave us some apple juice and a tasty apple donut. We had a very fun day at Blackberry Farms. So far we have had a great start to an exciting year of learning new things.