St. Michael's
Second Grade
Week of January 8
This week we will be rock collecting! We will go outside, and each group will collect rocks. We will sort them by their properties. I will be putting out may special rocks, fossils, and crystals for the students to explore.
Week of December 18
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!
Have a wonderful break!
Week of December 4
This week we will be exploring the question: What happens to rocks when they are submerged in water. We will be using the same three rocks as before - tuff, scoria, and basalt. Each will react differently.
Rock exploration from last week.
Week of November 27
I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!
This week we will begin exploring rocks, specifically, basalt, scoria, and tuff. Each have their own properties we will discover. The students will be rubbing the rocks together to observe what happens - pieces come off - physical weathering!
Week of November 13
This week we are lucky to have another guest teacher - Mr. Bosse will be teaching about scuba diving. He will be showing the class the equipment and how it works. We have amazing parents!
Last week Mrs. Baffert taught about bioluminescence.
Did you know that glow sticks are brighter in hot water? They last longer when cold!
Week of November 7
Welcome to the second trimester! We are starting Earth Science. This week, Harrelson's grandma, Annie Baffert, is coming in to do a fun activity with each class. We will be painting pumpkins with glow-in-the-dark paint.
Week of October 30
Happy Halloween week! We will be engineering bone bridges this week. Students will work in groups to collaborate how to design a bridge out of Q-tips, pipe cleaners, and string to hold up pumpkin candy. The goal is to hold the most candy! It will be a spook-tacular time!
Thank you so much to Monet's dad for providing an amazing forensics lab of Who Stole the Animal from the Zoo? The students loved it!
Week of October 2
We are continuing to explore liquids this week. Our question is: How do liquids change in containers? Students will observe liquid levels as the bottle changes direction by tilting to the side and turning upside down. They will also solve the falling-bottle puzzle. We will discover that the level always remains parallel to the floor!
Week of September 25
This week we are changing our state of matter to liquids! We will be looking at 7 different types of liquids, each with a unique property. The students will not know what the liquids are until the end. We will be learning some new vocabulary to describe the properties, for example, viscous and translucent.
Last week we finished solids with building even taller towers!
Week of September 18
This week we will be continuing to build towers. The students enjoyed the process last week. Now, they will be challenged to make an even taller tower. We learned that a strong, wide base is the most ideal start. It was fun to see all of their different approaches!
Towers from last week:
Week of September 11
This week we will be testing what materials are best to construct a tower. The students will be engineering towers to stand tall. What is best to use as the base vs the top?
We will share our creations!
Last week students sorted solid objects by different properties.
Week of August 28
This week we are continuing to learn about solids. We were able to explore a variety of different solids. We listed many properties that ranged from flexible to stretchy to rigid. Now that the students are able to describe their properties, we are now going to learn about what materials solids may be made of - rubber, plastic, ceramic, etc. Mr. Sullivan was able to show the class the optical illusion of a solid, moving pencil - it looks like the pencil is bending!
Students enjoyed coming up with fun ways to describe their solids!
Week of August 21
Welcome to lower school science! This trimester, we will be studying Solids and Liquids. We will begin with solids. The students will be able to sort a variety of solids based on their properties. We will dive into what properties are and what how they apply to solids.