Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you! -Ralph Waldo Emerson

The entire class wants to say a BIG "Thank You" to all of our FABULOUS parent volunteers! Thank you for tying our skates, joining us on field trips, celebrating special holidays with us, publishing our books, leading us in readers' theater and so much more! We think you are a TREASURE beyond MEASURE!

Dear Families,

The school year may be winding down, but the kids are winding up for a summer filled with family, friends, and fun, fun, fun! I have found myself wanting to slow down and enjoy each child before they leave for the summer. This year holds so many wonderful memories for me. This was a great group of kids. I’m so proud to have been their teacher!

A book club gathering out in the commons.

Language Arts: This month the whole class will read the story Flat Stanley and respond to comprehension questions. The young boy in the story, Stanley Lambchop, is flattened by a bulletin board and his parents mail him off for a visit with a friend. We will visit the official Flat Stanley Website to see all of the amazing places that Stanley has visited over the years. Each child in our class will make their own Flat Stanley, and then they will be writing a letter to a friend and sending Stanley for a visit. You can help them select a friend or family member to send him to and address the envelope. When your child’s Flat Stanley returns home (via the mail) you can read the return letter together to find out all about his adventures. Upon his return, you may want to encourage your child to send him on to other friends and family members… This could turn into an ongoing adventure to encourage summer writing! The children are eager to finish up and begin sharing their autobiographies. Thank you for being the “storytellers” for this writing project, and I hope you enjoy the final product! Just a reminder that daily reading over the summer months will be very important for a strong and confident start to third grade! Check out the summer reading list online provided by the Lower School Library.

Learning to slide, flip and turn Tangram shapes! Sometimes two heads are better than one... Teamwork produces results!

Math: We recently completed our study of double-digit subtraction and a mini unit about shapes and patterns. We will finish the school year working with three digit numbers to review and practice multi-digit addition and subtraction skills. The children have learned to use a variety of subtraction strategies; including the Quick Hundreds, Tens & Ones Method, the Expanded Method, the Adding Up Method and the Ungroup First Method. Weekly summer practice with basic facts and double-digit addition and subtraction will help keep those skills fresh for a strong start in third grade next fall. Please check the Math Expressions website for challenge activities from the second grade curriculum or visit a store such as Lakeshore Learning for a math practice workbook or games that utilize these basic math computation skills.

The Pancake Breakfast raised enough money to redo the garden at Golden Valley Rehabilitation Center, making it wheelchair accessible, so we had to dig up the bulbs we planted for them and put them in pots for the residents to enjoy.

Science: In April we honored Earth Day by reading about topics such as recycling, pollution, and conservation during book clubs and read aloud. We will spend the last few weeks of May reading about and discussing interdependence between the plants and animals in several of the world’s largest biomes. We will also make our final observations of our slow growing Journey North Tulip Garden.

Taking turns on the diving board during the swimming unit in P.E.

Social Studies: We will wrap up our study of important people in United States history with The Wright Brothers, Amelia Earhart and Rosa Parks. The children will have an opportunity to apply their geography and map skills learning this month as they compete in games of Roll 6 Map Skills. We will also wrap up the school year with a visit from our Lower School Counselor, Lisa Lokke, who will focus on the topic of Summer Safety. Our final C.A.R.E. Theme for the 2010-2011 School Year is… Creativity!

Writing buddies and good friends... All smiles!

Last But Not Least...

Field Day – Friday, May 20th 9:30-11:30 (followed by BBQ picnic lunch)

Field Day is a non-uniform day and children should wear tennis shoes and appropriate clothing on Field Day so they can comfortably and safely participate in the activities. Please send a water bottle filled & labeled with your child’s name. Parents are encouraged to join our class for the BBQ lunch and field day activities (please dress to participate). The more the merrier!

2nd Grade Brookview Park Day – Friday, May 27th10:30-2:30

All of the second grade students and their teachers will head out to nearby Brookview Park to celebrate a successful school year together. This is a non-uniform day and children should dress appropriately for an outdoor picnic and playtime.

2J Portfolio Sharing Day – Wednesday, June 1st 1:45-3:00

Come join your child for a look back at the school year through their eyes. I will begin with a brief introduction, so please be on time. Please contact me if you need to reschedule: 763.381.8316 or carrie.jensen@breckschool.org

Lower School Closing Ceremonies – Monday, June 6th

Closing Ceremonies will begin at 11:00 in the Chapel and a short reception will follow. Students are dismissed to parents following Closing Ceremonies and there is no bus service or extended day.

Thanks for a terrific year together! Time flies when you’re having fun! -Ms. Jensen

Have a Heart!

Dear Families,

Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays to celebrate at school. As we sit and open our valentines, shouts of “thank you” can be heard across the room. It is a day when each member of our classroom is reminded that they are loved. Read on to find out what we are up to in February…

We had a wonderful time with Jin, our guest teacher from South Korea. She taught us how to play fun games from her country!

Language Arts: Once we wrap up our country study presentations early this month, we will begin writing animal adventure stories in writer’s workshop. To prepare ourselves to write animal adventure stories, we have been reading animal adventure stories during book clubs and our current read aloud book is a fantastic animal adventure written by Cynthia Rylant, called Gooseberry Park. It is a story filled with well-developed animal characters, as well as a story of friendship, kindness and caring at its best. Our focus during reading will now move to comprehension strategies for the remainder of the school year. This month we will also read a few “valentine” stories for book club, in honor of Valentine’s Day. In addition each child will get to select a valentine poem to practice and recite for the class. We have finished up our whole group word study lessons and will return to our small group lessons. We begin working on unusual vowel sounds. The children have taken a mid-year assessment and we will update their individual “No Excuses” word lists. Everyone will have a list of 10 words that they need to work on.

Readers' Theater practices and performs Good Night, Good Knight!
Readers' Theater practices and performs CLICK, CLACK, MOO! Cows that Type.

Social Studies: We will continue our study of Important People in American History by learning about both Harriet Tubman and President Abraham Lincoln in February. Earlier this school year we went to the Golden Valley Rehabilitation Center to clean out their garden plot and plant bulbs for the residents to enjoy in the spring. We plan to return there sometime in February to share songs, poetry, pictures and information about bulbs with the residents. We are planning to return in the spring to plant a summer garden for them as well. Our C.A.R.E. theme this month is KINDNESS! We will celebrate Valentine’s Day in the morning on Monday, February 14th by making adorable puppy valentine bags, playing some fun games and eating a “healthy” treat. Later that day the children will deliver and open their valentines from one another. Please send valentines to school on Monday morning.

Making and decorating a Jegi to play a South Korean game that Jin taught us.

Math: We will finish up and assess our learning in Unit Six: Telling Time this month. The class is learning telling time to the hour, 5 minutes, and 1 minute. One of the most challenging concepts for children to learn is how the hour hand moves with the minute hand. This is a great time to purchase your child an ANALOG watch (no digital please) to reinforce these concepts. We will continue our work with telling time during our daily math warm up activity when we move on to Unit Seven: Tables & Graphs. In this unit we will take a look at the graphical representation of information. Graphing allows children to represent a wide variety of information and make comparisons. They will learn to collect, record and analyze data using data tables, picture graphs, pictographs, bar graphs, and circle graphs.

Working on our Country Study Posters is so much fun!

Science: We will continue to discuss Healthy Habits this month! The children will learn the importance of eating healthy foods, drinking plenty of water, getting 8-10 hours of sleep each night, keeping their bodies clean inside and out, and exercising their minds and bodies every day. The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Plantmobile will come back to visit us with an interactive presentation called “Zoom in on Plants.” The children will have an opportunity to look at and discuss plant parts, and the roles and responsibilities the plant parts play in the life of a plant. The students will be invited to design Tropism experiments to conduct at home on their very own bean plants that they plant that day. In our classroom grow lab we will set up the three tropism experiments; geotropism, thigmotropism, and phototropism. Soon we will begin a study of trees as we prepare for our maple-sugaring visit to Woodlake Nature Center in March.

Our first female pumpkin flower! We cross pollinated a male and female flower and look what we have now...

A teeny tiny Jack Be Little pumpkin!

Last But Not Least...

Please make sure your child is dressed for outdoor play every day! That means… hat, water resistant mittens or gloves, snow pants, boots, and a winter coat. Label everything with first and last names please.

I look forward to sharing your child’s progress at conferences!

Ms. Jensen

Our first official Country Study Presentation! We're off to a GREAT start!

Calendar of Upcoming Events

February

Thursday: 2/10 Parent-Teacher Conferences 12:00 – 8:00

Friday: 2/11 Parent-Teacher Conferences 8:30 – 4:00

Monday: 2/14 Valentine’s Day – Non-Uniform Day – Wear red, pink & white

Week of 2/14-2/17 Lower School Book Fair

Friday: 2/18 Faculty Workshop - No School

Monday: 2/21 Presidents’ Day - No School

Monday: 2/28 Historical Perspectives Presentation: Helen Keller

March

Wednesday: 3/2 Woodlake Nature Center Field Trip 9:15-11:45

Monday: 3/14-Friday: 3/25 Spring Break No School

I have a dream… -Martin Luther King Jr.

Happy New Year! I’m excited to get back to school and gather together with the entire class. It is hard to believe that we are turning the corner and moving on to the second half of the school year, how exciting! Our class will have the honor of hosting Lee Su Jin, a Korean teaching student, from January 18-28thin our classroom. Read on to find out what we are up to in 2011…

Happy New Year!

Language Arts: We finished up our letter-writing unit with letters to Santa before winter break and celebrated our first round of PUBLISHED BOOKS! Thank you to all of the members of our parent publishing team for their time, energy, effort and dedication! In preparation for our next Writer’s Workshop study, the children all selected a country to study before we left for break. This month each child will use a variety of resources (books, websites, DVDs and personal interviews) in an effort to gather interesting information about the country they chose to study. They will have a research booklet to record their findings and they will create a poster board to present their learning to the class. This is always a fun project for the children. I will send home information about the project so that you can further support and enhance your child’s learning. We will do three whole group word study lessons this month focusing on contractions, base words with –ed endings and plural words. Our weekly Book Clubs and Readers’ Theater will continue as usual. This month I will take time out to do reading, writing and spelling assessments to make sure that students are meeting our midyear benchmarks in these language arts areas. I will share these assessments with you when we meet in February for Parent/Teacher Conferences.

Thank you Publishing Parents! We LOVE our published books!

Social Studies: Our C.A.R.E. theme for the month of January is JOYFULNESS! Prior to winter break, we continued our study of Important People in America’s history by discussing the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and our country’s first President, George Washington. We will spend some time discussing why communities need rules and laws and then draft our very own Classroom Constitution. We will also read about Sacajawea, the young Native American girl who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition, and Martin Luther King Jr.

The children shared "Gifts from the Heart" with the grandmas and grandpas at Colonial Acres.

Math: We started Unit Five before winter break and we will continue with this very important unit on double-digit addition in January. The goal for Unit Five in our mathematics curriculum is for the children to grasp the concept of a new ten or a new hundred in 2-digit addition. The concept of grouping ones into a new ten, or tens into a new hundred is demonstrated using quick ones (circles), quick tens (sticks), and quick hundreds (squares). Through the use of these tools, the children are able to understand the concept behind what they are doing when they add, both with and without regrouping. They are then given the opportunity to develop their own solutions strategies, followed by direct instruction of commonly used methods. A unit on telling time is coming up soon. This would be a great time to purchase an analog watch for your child so they can practice telling time.

All dressed up for the Christmas Program!

Science: We wrapped up our bulb study the week before winter break by looking back at our bulb experiment predictions and recording the actual results. It turned out that no matter how we planted the bulbs, the roots went down, the stems went up, and they were able to grow! Upon returning from winter break we will take the Grape Hyacinth bulbs, which we tricked into thinking they had experienced winter, out of the refrigerator and we will watch them grow and bloom. Our pumpkin plants have started to blossom, and the class is anxiously awaiting our first opportunity to cross-pollinate the male and female flowers in hopes of producing a pumpkin! This month we will discuss Healthy Habits! The children will learn the importance of eating healthy foods, drinking plenty of water, getting 8-10 hours of sleep each night, keeping their bodies clean inside and out, and exercising their minds and bodies every day.

Wrapping up our Paperwhite bulb study!

Last But Not Least...

Please make sure your child is dressed for outdoor play every day! That means… hat, water resistant mittens or gloves, snow pants, boots, and a winter coat. Label everything with first and last names please.

Ms. Jensen

Calendar of Upcoming Events

Monday: 1/3 P.E. Skating Rotation Begins

Friday: 1/14 No School: Teacher Workshop Day

Monday: 1/17 No School: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Friday: 1/21 P.E. Swimming Rotation Begins

Thursday: 2/10 No School: Parent/Teacher Conferences

Friday: 2/11 No School: Parent/Teacher Conferences