This is NOT a Half-Hearted Post!

Today was the K-2 Assembly, and these members of our class got Birthday Books. Mrs. G presents them for birthdays and half-birthdays.

And speaking of...guess what today was?

HALF DAY! We are exactly half way through our second grade school year today.

Our homework was to dress with something that showed half, and/or bring half of something.

Here we are. (See if you can guess what is half about each picture. You may need your local second grader to help you....)
Hint: socks.
Hint: hair, shoes, socks.
Hint: (HELLO!) Hair
Hint: shirt made just for today.
Hint: half dress/half pants
Hint: shirt drawn just for today (with the "real thing" being compared close by...)
Hint: there's no place like home...
Hint: He is just a good-looking kid, isn't he?
Hint: Half dark/half light.
Hint: high water
Hint: twinkle toes
Hint: black/red (and not a checkerboard)
Hint: socks/sleeves/gloves...you name it!
Hint: shoe SIZE
Hint: look down
Hint: I got those happy feet...
Right after lunch, we hit the middle of the day, and the year was officially half way over! Let the celebration begin!

We read books like "A Giraffe and a Half" by Shel Silverstein where a half was added and then taken away. We read about a "Half Birthday Party" and calculated when our half birthday party would be. We looked at a hilarious website that ER brought in called "Things I have cut in half." (thingsIhavecutinhalf.blogspot.com)
We told a story about an animal that kept giving everyone a half of a half of a half...of a piece of cake and figured out the fractions they represented. By the time everyone got a piece of cake the pieces were mighty small!
We took a survey to see what fraction of a Hershey bar we would want.
We were surprised to find out that a bigger number on the bottom does not always mean a bigger piece! We used a real Hershey bar to calculate this and then we all got small bars to eat.

Other activities:

• Finding out what we could do in half a minute (30 seconds) and half an hour (30 minutes).
• We read a second grade word list to see how many words we could read in half a minute (30 seconds). We timed this 3 times!
• We timed how many times we could write our names in thirty seconds, how many letters of the alphabet we could write (then say) in thirty seconds, how many numbers we could write (then say) in thirty seconds.
• We found out what was half of each of these: a dozen eggs, 10 divided by 1/2, a dollar, a minute, an hour, February, one foot, one yard, one cup, a diamond shape, 12:00.
• We used clocks to show times with "half past".
• We showed thirteen ways of looking at a half. (from http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/games/fractions/index.html)
• We drew the other half of some pictures.

Whew! We had a WONDERFUL half day. The only sad part was realizing this year will be coming to and end.
I couldn't resist posting this picture. My oldest daughter, Katy, turned 26 today. We called her in Pennsylvania today to sing to her. She and her husband just found out yesterday that he got a promotion and they will be moving to Wisconsin in the next year. (The wrong direction. South is so much more preferable, Katy!) This was taken in 1985 : a very bad year for perms.

Have a wonderful three day weekend!