Fun Stuff

Field Trips:
We will do several field trips this year. Some trips will be with both second grade classes, and some will be just Room 12. I will give notice of upcoming field trips via email and also by paper permission slip. Please sign and return these promptly! Field trip fees are separate from the classroom supply fee, and will be collected before each trip. Everyone will go regardless of ability to pay, so please let me know if your child needs a scholarship for any trip.

Celebrations:

• Halloween: There is an all-school costume parade, usually followed by a “Monster Mash” in the gym. This will happen first thing on Halloween morning, and parents are invited to stick around and join the fun! We will also have a classroom party with “Halloweeny” activities and a scavenger hunt.
•   Valentine’s Day: You may remember opening little Valentine’s Day cards from your classmates when you were in school. The kids still  love it today, so we have a classroom Valentine’s celebration where kids can share cards, have treats, do some crafts and other fun activities.
• Ocean Week: This is a week long, school wide, celebration of our streams-to-oceans  ecosystems curriculum. There will be special classroom and all school activities the entire week. Ocean Week usually falls in mid to late April.
• Reward days: Students will work together to earn the occasional “wear your PJs to school” day, a movie/popcorn day, “activity” day, a pizza party, or some other fun idea we come up with. These could be just our classroom, both second grade classrooms, or the whole school.

 

Birthdays:

We all like to celebrate our birthdays, and we try to make student birthdays special, but low key, in Room 12. Please do not bring treats from home; food treats can cause problems because of allergies, and other treats cause competition and inequity. Thank you for your understanding. If your child is bringing party invitations to school to distribute, please make sure he/she is inviting everyone in the class, and that invitations are placed into student backpacks during the child’s free time. Summer birthday? No worries; we celebrate summer birthdays on the 1/2 birthday mark!

 

Sharing/Person of the Week:

In Room 12, we don’t do weekly sharing, or show-and-tell.  Our sharing will focus on talking together at our class meetings about the important people, events, and things in our lives. In addition, each student will get to be our “Person of the Week” for one week during the year. This is a special opportunity for each student to have lots of attention and admiration from his or her classmates, and to bring in special objects to share and describe. At the end of the week, your child will come home with a book containing a class interview, portraits of your child drawn by classmates, and compliments given by classmates.