Greetings from 2nd grade!! Thank you to all of you that could make it to sing in church last Sunday. We appreciate it. The kids sounded wonderful. What a great way to praise the Lord! Here are a few reminders for the upcoming weeks.

Read! Read! Read! Don’t forget to keep track of the minutes you read outside of school on your calendar. Your goal is 15 minutes a day or 465 minutes for the month of November! Turn in your calendars on November 2nd!

Mrs. Schwartz showed me a really cool bookmark that can help you and your child keep track of the time they have spent reading. It is a bookmark with a timer. You can set it to count up or down for the 15 minutes or the 465 minute goal. You can find them at www.markmytime.com or they are available at Barnes and Noble.

Remember the Yankee Candle fundraiser packets are due back this coming Monday, October 19th.

On Friday, October 23rd we will dismiss at 11:30 a.m. This marks the end of the first quarter. Report cards will go out on Wednesday, October 28th.

There will also be no school on Friday, October 30th. Parent teacher conferences will take place on Thursday the 29th and Friday the 30th. Being looking for a conference sign up sheet in the next couple weeks.

Picture retakes are on the 27th and 28th. As soon as I know more details, I will let you know. I believe you are to bring your first set of pictures back.

Our next social studies test will be on Wednesday, October 28th. We will be taking it in the morning sometime. The test is over Unit 4: People Long Ago. The study guide is attached.

On Wednesday, October 28th, we will be having a skating party at the Wagon Wheel. This will take place in the afternoon. Look for a permission slip in the next few weeks. Grades 1-4 will be going. This takes the place of a “Halloween party.” However, on Thursday afternoon we will be doing a small craft and having a treat. We will not be dressing up in costumes.
Here’s what we have been up to this week:

Religion: This week we finished up the story of Moses with the golden calf. We discussed how the story does not end there though. So if you get a chance continue the story at home. When Moses went up to get the Ten Commandments he was gone for a long time—40 days. Some of the people became impatient and some were afraid. They wanted a god they could see and touch. The people no longer loved and trusted God above everything else. They put their own want first. They made a statue of a gold calf and called it their new god. We may not make idol gods for ourselves, but in a way, we fall into the same trap that the Israelites did. Whenever we love something more than we love God, whenever something else becomes most important in our life, it becomes an idol. Actually, most of the when we break the First Commandment, it is because we put ourselves first—we do what we want rather than what God wants. There is only one way to get over this sin sickness that we have. Only Jesus can take away our sins. Only He can change us so that we turn from sin and follow God’s will. Remember the word “JOY.” It is a good acronym for us to remember. Put Jesus first, others next, and yourself last. Trust the Lord!

Math: We began the week by taking our fact test over sums of eleven. We also took our written test on Tuesday. Now we are working on our sums of 12. We continued counting money, but now we added nickels to the mix. Remember when your child counts change they should always begin with the coin that is worth the most. We practiced writing the shorthand date, just using digits. The kids picked up on this pretty easy. They write it on their papers, but some of them never realized what it meant. Finally, we practiced making bar graphs and reading a Venn diagram.

Reading: We started a story entitled “Nature Spy.” It encouraged the kids to take a closer look at things around them outside. The kids really listened because at recess I have kids coming up saying, “Did you know if you take a closer look at a leaf, you can really see the veins we were talking about?” We did a comprehension check, worked on comparing and contrasting, and went over the following vocabulary words: curious, spy, discover, small, green, bird, eye, notice, size, and close. Again, we are working on fluency, so we have been reading aloud quite a bit.

Science and Soc. St. : We started off the week with our Unit A science test. I read the test aloud, but it was an individual assessment. Thank you for all the studying you did at home. We moved on to unit B—“Homes for Living Things.” We started off by answering the question, “What is an Environment?” We discussed the words habitat, environment, and adapt. In social studies, we talked about American heritage. We defined heritage, landmark, and memorial. Some of the symbols of our heritage are the bald eagle, our flag, the Constitution, and the Statue of Liberty. In addition, we talked about heroes and holidays. We discussed a few heroes like Harriet Tubman and Neil Armstrong and their accomplishments. We defined the word legend and discussed that some parts of legends may be made up. Finally, we discussed the following holidays and why they are celebrated: President’s Day, Memorial Day, and Labor Day. There will be a test on Wednesday, October 28th. The study guide is attached!

Language Arts: In language arts this week we talked about plural possessives. This has been very confusing to some. Each year this seems to be a tough concept. We will be reviewing this again. We also learned how to write a greeting and closing to a letter. The tricky part seems to be the commas. This will come in handy later when we write our penpals in Newhall, IA (it is my mom’s second grade class).

Spelling/Phonics: In spelling this week, we studied words with consonant clusters. In phonics we are continuing to work on long vowels. I know many of you may think this is too easy, but there are several ways to spell long vowels so this is a pretty long unit for us. We reviewed long a, i, and u. I introduced the long “o.”

God’s blessings on the week ahead! Remember the acronym for JOY!

Jesus
Others
You

In Christ,

Miss Rempfer

Spelling Words: lake, rock, ask, pick, truck, black, back, bake, clock, kick, kite, take
Challenge Words: dock, snake

Alternate List: driving, aunt, pain, hearing, training, birthday, grasshopper, hello, pool, howl, safe, talked, bottle, thinks
Challenge Words: energy, disturbed

Memory Work: The 6th Commandment: You shall not commit adultery.
The 7th Commandment: You shall not steal.
The 8th Commandment: You shall not give false testimony against
your neighbor.