Mrs. Ballnik's Second Grade

Friday, October 18, 2019

Mrs. Ballnik’s Classroom News     My email is ballnic@dearbornschools.org

Social Studies Night is Wednesday, October 23 from 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.. It is free and I give extra credit, if you come!

Picture Day is Monday, October 21.

SCIENCE- Science is the study of Matter right now.  We use adjectives or Properties to describe matter.  Matter is everything.  A desk, water, air etc…

Book Bags – The books are being inventoried in the book room for the school.  We may not have books in book bags for a while, unless I get another source.

PLANNERS– Please send these every day because we use them. The spelling words will be written in them, also. There is a charge, if a planner is lost.

SPELLING WORDS FOR NEXT WEEK ARE Consonant Blends.  Please continue to point out the pattern of the spelling words each week and help your child discover words with these patterns in their reading.  Soon, your child will be pointing these out to you, if they do not already.  A good idea is to get a blank notebook and keep a list.  Send them in for extra credit.

The words will be: ant, best, blame, brick, crack, drag, glad, lost, milk, plan, snack, split, strap, trunk, twice.

Social Studies– Please continue to point out things that you see as you walk/ride through our COMMUNITY of Dearborn.  We are studying about community.  There are natural characteristics (tree, river, grass) and human characteristics (bridge, road, store) of our community to be seen.  Please discuss these as you see them at home.   Can your child name the 5 characteristics of a community? Transportation, Buildings, Natural Characteristics, Places to have Fun and Businesses.  What does each of these categories mean to your child?   

     We discussed 3 types of communities:  Rural/Country/, Suburban, Urban/City.  We live in a suburban community.  This language can be confusing.  Thank-you for discussing things at home, too.

    Please discuss the concepts of transportation as well as, the comparison of natural/physical things in a community compared to manmade things in a community.  There will be a computer test on this, next week.

     Please sign and return the Christopher Columbus report after your child has presented it to you, if you have not done so.  This is a way for the students to talk to you about what we do in school.  We read and discussed about Columbus’ trip across the Atlantic Ocean to land that he thought was the Indies.  We talked about the positive and negative reasons to go on Columbus’ trip with him.  We made a pictograph with ships that said our opinion. There were more no ships than yes ships.   Each student chose if they would or would not go with Columbus and at least 2 reasons to back up that opinion (choice) on that ship and then used that to write an opinion paper.   The final copy of your child’s opinion essay is on their locker and the rough draft is in the blue report that your child should share with you.  Thank-you for asking your child questions about their choice.