Second Grade Bulthuis
Greetings from 2B! Second grade is an exciting and busy year of learning! Each day we begin with ADD (Arithmetic Developed Daily) while the helper of the day does calendar and our teacher enters the attendance and hot lunch count on the computer. After ADD math we either take our spelling pretest (Mondays) or open our handwriting books. We will be learning to write in cursive as soon as we have reviewed all the manuscript (upper and lower case) letters! We put our books away and gather on the carpet to share, pray together, sing praises to God, and review our Bible memory work. We love Bible story time as we listen and think about God's promises to us.
When Bible time is finished, we go back to our seats and our teacher explains the work for the rest of the morning. Most of the morning we are busy with reading and writing. Sometimes we read together as a class, sometimes we read in small groups, and sometimes we read alone. When our teacher reads with small groups, the rest of us are busy with phonics, spelling practice, word work, poetry folders, problem solving, file folder games, thinkers, and writing. We will be doing lots of different kinds of writing this year including journals, stories, reports, and even speeches!
After working hard all morning we are ready for lunch and recess! If the weather is nice we go out to play on our beautiful new playground, and if it's rainy or very cold, we have fun with indoor games. When recess is over, we go to DEAR time where we "Drop Everything And Read"! We keep track of the books we read and write about our favorite ones! If our book is on the list we can take Acelerated Reading tests on the computer in our classroom. We usually end DEAR time with a book that our teacher reads out loud to us.
Next is math, where we work with numbers, patterns, and shapes. Once a week we work in math stations where we play games and practise the things we've learned so far. We do science 3 times a week-we will be studying butterflies, soils, chemical changes, balancing and weighing, and weather. On the other 2 days we do social studies-we'll learn about communities (especially our community of Holland!), Christmas in other countries, map skills, and toward the end of the year we'll set up our own KIDTOWN to learn about economics! We also look forward to our "special" classes, which include music on Tuesday, art on Friday, and gym on Monday and Friday. On Wednesday afternoons we visit the computer lab, and on Friday afternoons we walk down to the Media Center to check out new and interesting books.
One of our favorite times of the week is chapel on Wednesday morning, where all the Rose Park students and teachers (and some parents too!) gather in the gym to worship God. Our school theme this year will focus on the story of God, "I love to tell the story", especially as we celebrate 50 years of faithfulness to Rose Park Christian School. Our key verse is found in Psalm 96:2 ..."Sing to the LORD, praise His name, proclaim His salvation day after day." We hope to deepen our relationship with God and our Rose Park community by meeting monthly with our "Village" team (cross grade level groups). We thank God for this beautiful school where every day we can learn more about His Word and His World of art, music, books, language, nature, numbers, people and places!