Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving traditions

At this time of year, people look forward to certain family traditions. A tradition is “the process of handing down a belief or custom from one generation to the next.” 

At Thanksgiving some people go to their grandma's house and eat turkey dinner with their family.  Some people take a vacation.  Some friends in class eat special food from the countries their family came from.  In my family, Mr. Levy (who is a wonderful cook) prepares the big feast.  Then we all sit down at the table together to eat turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and salad.   We talk about all of the things we are grateful for.

What is your Thanksgiving tradition?   

What is your favorite Thanksgiving food?

What are you grateful for?

Want to join our summer book club?

What are you doing this summer?

Summer is an amazing time of year. We have opportunities to visit with friends and family.  Some of us take relaxing vacations.  Recently the Levy family took a trip to Donner Lake and Truckee.  There was still snow on the ground up on Donner pass.   

We took long hikes on the Sawtooth Trail. 

We also swam in the freezing water of the lake.  

What have you been doing this summer?

Welcome pen pals!

Dear Pen Pals,

We can not wait to hear back from you. In Southern California we have a lot of fun!  How is it where you live?  We live in a busy city, where lots of people live and we have a lot of homes. 

 
Some of the sports we like to do are baseball, swim,  soccer, tether ball, hand ball and basketball.  What sports do you play?

In school we like to do math, writing and reading.  We also have activities like music, art, the library and PE.  

On the weekend we like to go to Sky-high (where you can jump on trampolines),to Hollywood or to the movies. We also love to go to the beach because we live right by the Pacific coast.  We have lots of malls to go shopping, do you?  

Some questions we have for you are... Do you play at a playground?  Do you have any pets?  Do you have a lot of cars in your city?  What do you do for fun? 

Open House Tonight!

We can't wait to show you all of the hard work from this year!  Please join us from 6:00- 7:00pm.

What was the favorite thing from open house?

We have jumped into 2nd grade!

On Sunday mornings I swim in  the ocean.  I love the swelly, blue-green salt water and the chill in the misty morning air.  It is an amazing way to start the day.  As much as I love it, I am always a little bit nervous right before I jump in. I stand at the waters edge with butterflies in my stomach.  Will the water be really cold?  Will I see any dolphin or seals?  What direction is the current traveling?    Slowly I get my toes wet, then I go in up to my knees and before I know it I am swimming through the first wave, then down the coast.

As I was swimming today I was thinking about how starting the school year is a lot like going out into the ocean.  Most of us, on the first day of school are a little nervous because we don't know what to expect.  But as the first few days pass, we meet our teacher and make new friends, we learn rules, routines and begin to work together as a class. Friday was the 8th day of school.  In class we talked about what we can do better today compared to the first day of school.  Every day is a new opportunity to learn and make better choices. We have memorized poems, played math games, we are working on our reading stamina, we started working in math on number sense and writing in our journals.  We are reading books of our choice, and as groups we made either a rural, urban or suburban community.

Our class has jumped in and we are diving through the surf :-)

Our Pen Pal Visit

Personalize a picture slideshow

Martin Luther King Found Poetry

Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other places and putting them together as poetry (a literary equivalent of a collage) by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text.  

Today we create MLK Jr. Found Poems

Celebrating MLK Jr. with our blogging buddies

 The past few weeks we have been learning about civil rights heros.  We have read about Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges and Martin Luther King Jr.  In honor of MLK day we spent some time with our 3rd grade blogging buddies asking each other questions about Martin Luther King and their own dreams.  

We also watched a video of some of Mrs. Levy's past students talking about their dreams for the future.  (Video credit goes to some of our fabulous parents!)

Write a comment to your friends about the videos they created. Do you agree with their answers? Did they say something that made you think or share an idea you hadn't thought of?  What do you think about working with 2nd grade?

Remember the best comments start a conversation, so be sure to ask a question!

Winter Holidays

Winter Holidays 

One of the most exciting things during winter are all of the holidays people celebrate with their friends and families. There are many different holidays that fall during the winter season. 

Watch the BrainpopJr. video on Winter Holidays. 

No matter what holiday you celebrate, you and your family have special traditions. 

A tradition is something that family, friends, or another group of people has done for many years and continues to do on a regular basis. 

Learning about other people's traditions is an excellent way to learn  about other cultures, beliefs and more about your friend!

We got together with a Mrs. Broussard's third grade class.  Each student in Third Grade has had the privilege of participating in a 1 to 1 program. This means that each student gets their own Acer to work on in class. Working together we will collaborate on creating a blog comment about our family traditions for the winter holidays.  We will be posting our comments on both our class blog and 

Mrs. Broussard's blog.  

After completing your interview, leave a comment with your "Blogging Buddy"about the winter holiday traditions you celebrate.

What are some traditions you and your family practice over the winter holidays? Which is your favorite tradition? Why is it special?  

Don't forget, excellent comments include:

- complete sentences

- high vocabulary

- questions that can spark a conversation