Our Final Day Together

Last Lost Tooth of the Year. (J lost it at our party last night!)
We stood in the hall for the traditional send off to the graduating fifth graders. (Our turn is coming sooner than you know.)
We had a very low key day where Mrs. O let us do our work where ever we wanted to.
And here is what I will miss the most: looking at these sweet faces all day.

Thank you for an incredible two years with your children. I am going to leave this blog up so you can come back often and see your first/second grade years. (I did have to remove some of the pictures from first grade because we ran out of storage space on the blog!)

Please let me know how your children are over the years. I cannot wait to see the great plans God has for each one of them in the future.

If you want to keep up with me, I keep another blog here: joyjoyinthejourney.blogspot.com .

“Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs. And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of truth, feel the hem of Heaven. You will go away with old, good friends. And don't forget when you leave why you came." (A. Stevenson)

One Was Fun!

With one day to go, we decided to celebrate two wonderful years as a class.

We did our class cheer one more time as the parents set up our party. Everyone was very excited.
Well...almost everyone!
We made sand sculpture picture frames for the photo Mrs. R took of us earlier this week. (What a special way to preserve a memory!)
As always, we had lots of parents in to help us have a great time.
After sweeping up enough sand to create a desert, we were ready for snacks.
Root beer floats! They were the perfect treat.
Most of us ate very enthusiastically.
Mrs. O was given some great bumblebee memorabilia. :)
That night, we continued our party under trees at Central Market where a good time was had by all.

Here is the finished masterpiece for Mrs. O's new office. I LOVE IT! What a great way to remember my 2009-2010/2010-2011 Bumblebees.

Two Made Us a Little Blue...(We are going to miss second grade!)

EJ and his sister EJ brought their loyal dog Nigel by for a visit this morning.
Guess what arrived today?
Yearbooks! We enjoyed looking through them. (If you did not pre-order, they may be a few available in the office.)
GR's dad and loyal brother, BR, dropped by with lunch. (And cafeteria lunch was chicken with bones! Hooray! Not fingers, not tenders: bones. This week is Manager's Choice, so every few students get a different meal. Guess we were just the lucky ones. Except they were out of gravy for the potatoes. Maybe the gravy will appear tomorrow with the mac and cheese.)
We wrote nominations for "Person of the Year". The students had to illustrate a mock cover of Time magazine and then write a persuasive paragraph giving reasons why their choice should be chosen. The winner?
CB nominated aide, CL, and his persuasive piece won! His reasons were:

• She donated money and clothes to Belize.
• She is a special ed teacher.
• She hardly ever looses her temper.

Great job, CB! Majority agreeded that CL was most deserving of this award.
For math we worked with probability. We tossed a coin 100 times to see which comes up more often: heads or tails.

We rolled dice to see which side came up more often: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6.

Today was Memorial Day, so it was a revolving cast of characters in the classroom. We had as many as 12 students and as few as 7 at different times during the day. This was supposed to be a holiday, but we had that snow day on February 4. We kept thinking how fun that time by the fires was in February, and that helped. ...A little. :)

Two more days to go. No more homework, but please remember to send the agenda every day. Today I am sending home yearbooks and Summer Reading Club forms.

Three Was Full of Glee

Look who walked her brother, EJ, into the assembly this morning: future kindergartner EJ!
Our last assembly of second grade. Mrs. C and Mrs. D put on a program about Hink Pinks. (More on that later...)
Our last time singing the school song at an assembly for this year.
Today we celebrated OC's birthday. (It is really tomorrow!)
Our last reading celebration! These students read for over 1000 minutes during the month of May and got to choose from the ever-expanding classroom store. (Mrs. O adds to it daily as she cleans out 22 years worth of teaching "stuff".)
There was a special award for these students. None of them have been tardy or absent the entire year. Amazing!
Mrs. O had gifts for the class. She made everyone a "Diary of a Third Grade Kid" journal with a school pen. She also let everyone order a book from the last Scholastic order.
Here, the girls are enjoying their new journals and books.
After lunch we worked on Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies and Hinkety Pinketies.
A Hink Pink is a joke with a two word answer where both words rhyme and have ONE syllable.
(Example: Q:What do you call a fun Christmas? A cool Yule!)
A Hinky Pinkies is a joke with a two word answer where both words rhyme and have TWO syllables.
(Example: Q: What do you call a skunk painted fuscha? A: A pinker stinker!)

And last but not least...Hinkety Pinketies are jokes with a two word answer where both words rhyme and have THREE syllables.
(Example: Q: What do you call the White House? A: A President's Residence!

Lots of fun was had by all. Have a great weekend. We do have school on Monday because we are making up a snow day. (And it was a mighty good day off in February!) I know lots of parents will be off, and many of you have already let me know you will be out of town.

Four Left Us Wanting More

BR stopped by in some mighty spiffy pajamas today to help his mom take a special picture of our class first thing this morning.
She wanted a picture that included the teacher. (Since I'm usually taking the pictures, I'm not aways seen. The students have asked I get a copy of this and put it in my new office when I become principal.) (Click to enlarge the picture. All that second grade cuteness will make you reach for a Kleenex!)

Next on the agenda? TALENT SHOW TIME!
Four students from our room participated. EKM (far left) and two other second graders did a lively aerobics routine.
IP recited part of "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe, who is a distant relative of his!
JF and ER showed some sweet dance moves with a breakdance routine. (They've been taking lessons and moved so fast I couldn't even get focused pictures!)



Whew! Let's take a break and listen to Ms. B's announcement:
You can meet the "Pit Crew" on Monday in the gym.
The notes on the tree outside our room seem to be multiplying. Can't wait to read them!

A final shot of our brave (and tired) Talent Show contestants.

Tomorrow is the final Reading Celebration of the year. (Of my career...) Be sure and read tonight because the awards are pretty outstanding!

Day 5 Was Alive (With Fun!)

Yesterday was all about MATH!

We entered the Kingdom of Gallon. Each gallon has 4 Queens (quarts). Each Queen has a Prince and a Princess (pints). Each Prince and Princess had two Children (cups). We used this information to make Gallon Man. (Pictures hanging in background.)

We also participated in the Math Olympics with such activities as:
Giant Step: Take a giant step and measure it.
Paper Plate Discus Throw: Toss your paper plate and measure the distance it flew.
Grab a Handful: Grab as many cubes as you can. Put them in one side of a balance. Find the weight of these cubes using gram weights.
Sponge Squeeze: Place a sponge in a bowl of water and let it soak up lots of water. Using one hand, squeeze the water from the sponge into a balance pan. Get as much water out that you can with only one squeeze. Measure the mass of this water using the unit of measure that is provided.
High Jump: Mark the highest point you can reach on the wall. Now jump and mark the highest point you can reach. Measure the distance between these two lines.

Straw Javelin: Throw a straw as far as you can using an overhand motion. Have a partner watch for and mark the place where your straw first hits the ground. Find the distance between the throwing line and that point.

Everyone did a wonderful job and received a Math Olympics Medal. Way to go, Bumblebees!

Six Was a Mix of Wonderful Memories

You might want to get a glass of tea to sit down and enjoy a long post. I'll wait.
First thing this morning, recent pre-K graduate EK (sister of RK) came by so we could see that she is now officially a kindergartner. (Class of 2025!)
And what came in to our room next? A lot of love, that's what. Today would have been Mrs. O's anniversary. Somehow, the moms in the room knew this and began beating the tom-toms (or posting on the Yahoo group), and yellow roses flooded the classroom. I'm pretty sure they did not know those were the flowers I had in my wedding, and the flowers that Dave gave me each year on my anniversary. My eyes leaked a little, but they were happy and blessed tears. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, sweet families.
More happy news: CB brought the remains of his cast and explained how they cut it off of his leg. (It didn't hurt a bit, he assured us, but we think he is very brave.) He said at first it was hard to walk because he was used to the weight of the cast and he would jerk his leg up very high without it!
Wow! Look at these studious boys. Wonder what they are working so diligently at?
Switch to the other side of the room, and the girls are working hard, too. What could it be?
The release of our 2011 Bumblebee Word Searches! The students had to list 25 or so things about themselves and these were turned into word searches on discovery.com. (If you are a teacher reading this blog, this little project is pure magic for the end of the year.)
Here is the teacher's page with several of the things that she loves.
Last computer class! We had free choice time.
Students from McCallum presented "Alice in Wonderland" for us this afternoon. The best part?
Watching the eyes and faces of the students during the performance.
Oh, how I will miss these sweet faces.
"Off with her head!" We loved this play!
When we returned, our faithful year-long garden tender, Mrs. R, had the ingredients for pizzas laid out. Some of this came from our very own second grade garden!
Enjoy the way we loaded our mini-pizzas up for a fantastic snack.





Even LC had a hand in his pizza!
The finished product.
Perfection!
And enough time was left for a little free reading at the end of the day.

Thank you parents and students for a wonderful day. The good news? We have 6 more to go.