Columbus Wrap Up

My students and I had a lot of fun learning all about Christopher Columbus this past week.

First, we watched a quick video from Discovery Education that highlighted Columbus and what he is known for. 

Next, because we have been working very hard on complete sentences, after we completed this chart, each student chose one statement to write about Columbus...and I taught them how to draw a ship!

Then, we read a Scholastic Weekly Reader magazine dedicated to Mr. Columbus. Each student in my class has a subscription to the Scholastic Weekly Reader. We LOVE our magazines! They are filled with fun facts, current events, and TONS of non-fiction text features!!!

In our magazine we learned that one of the treasures Columbus took home with him was pineapple! Interesting, right!?  One of my wonderful parent volunteers comes once a month to bake something with the birthday kids for that month so I found a pineapple sponge cake recipe for them to make us!

While the birthday kids are learning about measurement, following directions, and baking safety, the rest of us are reading the recipe and predicting what the final product will look like!

I was a little worried that my 2nd graders wouldn't enjoy pineapple cake, but they LOVED it!!! Well, all but one little guy loved it :)

Next month I will add in a data collection piece and create a graph that shows who loved it and who didn't so much.

I had sooooo many kiddos tell me how excited they were to have the recipe so they could go home and have mom make it :)

Last week was a really great week! I don't think they will ever forget that Columbus treasured pineapple!

This week we are having our Halloween celebration at school and the following week is Fall Conferences. 

Pumpkin carving and pumpkin seed roasting at the Helm house this weekend!

Thanksgiving is just around the corner! What better way to get your kiddos to practice their math facts but to put them on a Thanksgiving Placemat?! Be sure to check out this {FREEBIE} at my store:

Vowel Posters

Happy Friday! Oh, this weekend couldn't have come soon enough! My husband was out of town for three days this week on a fishing trip for work... why doesn't teaching come with perks like that?! :) Oh right, we get every holiday off... and summer... :) But I still missed him, and it made the week seem so much longer!

Well, all of my reading stations are allllllmost up and running. 

We have been doing RTS, RTSo, LTR, and Work on Writing... we have spent some extra time on these four rotations because that RTSo station is just so hard to keep at a whisper level.  And I am determined to make stations work this year... so I am putting in my time to set expectations!

As I began introducing the Word Work station this week I realized I needed some vowel posters. Most of my 2nd graders know their vowel "lickety-split!" as one of my sweet little girls would say.

But for the few who are still working on this, I felt posters would be helpful.

I couldn't quite find the ones I wanted on TPT, so I created my own!

Click on the pictures or {here} to download your free copy!

What do you think? Helpful?