Fantastic Friday

Mrs. O typed and printed our stories. We had to decide where natural breaks came in the plot.
When we added illustrations, we could only draw pictures that showed what happened with the words on that page. This is harder to do than you would think, because we already know our entire story and want to add details that the reader does not know yet! We appreciate illustrators of picture books much more now.
In our "Time for Kids", we had a wonderful lesson on inventions. We decided that inventions are a LOT like the plot of the story we just wrote: you have a problem and you find the solution. Inventions solve a problem or a need to make life easier, more fun and more efficient.
We filled out a chart on our 3 favorite inventions in the article, then we began work on drawing an invention of our own!
In Science, we came up with a class list of natural bodies of water and manmade bodies of water. We decided that some could be on both lists, like dams and ponds.
OH, LOOK: VISITORS! My sister and her husband were in the neighborhood and stopped by to see our second grade classroom for the first time. (My sister is the one who buys the dogs that are the prizes for our "Dog-Gone" Good Readers contest in February...)(...and she will be really pleased to see that the picture I took of her shows her eyes half opened.)
We did a benchmark speed drill on addition and subtraction facts to see if our "SumDog" math homework is improving our mastery of these facts. The second grade teachers will compare facts in a few weeks.
We ended our day with a visit from the counselor who talked to us about career paths. And a good time was had by all.

Don't forget: this weekend is the last time to earn minutes for the January Reading Contest. We will have the reading celebration on Monday.