Weekend Update

Look what showed up at our classroom door today: mother/daughter rain boots. You know what that means: RAIN! We were so thankful to see the wet stuff for the first time in a long time. We finally got to mark "rainy" on our weather graph. Right next to "hot and sunny" for the past 9 days of school.
1 rainy day + 9 hot and sunny days = the 10th day of school. In first grade, Zero the Hero would come and visit us every 10 days. In second grade, we have Pocket Day every 10 days. Today, everyone came in, counted their pockets, and wrote them on a Post-It note to stick to the board.
Then, we took cubes for the number of pockets we had and made towers out of them. We got in order from the greatest number to the least number of cubes and made a human graph.
Pocket King today was IP, who had 21 pockets! He came prepared with a vest full of pockets!
We broke our cubes down and put them in our Pocket Day Jar, held by the Pocket King. 
We wrote all the data for our cubes down and then tried to find an easy way to add them up. We quickly decided if we could find combinations that added up to 10, we'd be able to add these numbers up faster. Once we came to a total (75) the Pocket King compared the total on the calculator. We were correct! Way to go, second grade adders!
Next, we tried some bigger numbers to add. Again, we looked for numbers that gave us multiples of 10, because tens are so easy to add. Our total: 150. (Can you believe we are already working with such large numbers already in second grade?)
The rain kept us in from recess, so we turned to our favorite free time activity: Free Read, Free Write, Free Draw. J used this time to draw a train so long it took three sheets of paper to complete it!
On to math. Today we worked with another math activity called Match 10. We counted out cards laid out in 5 rows of 4 (or 20, we quickly discovered). We took turns as partners turning cards over to make a total of 10. (Wild Cards could count as any number we chose.)
We are becoming nimble with numbers in second grade!

All week long we have a chance to earn commendations by doing anything from reading more than 60 minutes for homework to helping out a friend without being asked. (Mrs. O loves to catch us doing something right!) We then get to put our names on tickets and place them in the Commendation Can. There is a drawing on Fridays from the names, and the students picked get to get a treat from the Treasure Box. (Here's a little secret: everyone gets picked every Friday because we have ALL earned commendations during the week.) Parents: donations for the Treasure Box are always welcomed!

Hope you are having a great Labor Day holiday. Parents: don't forget your "homework" is due on Tuesday: you are telling about a tradition that you are passing down through your family that came from your heritage.