Visualizing... and Making Geometric Solids

It's hard to believe we have already started the month of April. April is National Poetry Month, but all of the classes at St. Ann are learning how to visualize.

In second grade we discussed how a book can be like a movie in our minds. We think about what we see, taste, hear, smell, and feel when we read. We have also been building our stamina while reading to ourselves and reading with buddies.

Here are a couple of books we have used to help us become more familiar with the idea of visualizing:

Duck! Rabbit! (Rosenthal) - Which animal do you see?

Make Van Gogh's Bed (Appel & Guglielmo) - Touch the art! See and feel the paintings!

The students had some pretty creative responses for what they saw when they looked at this picture. What do you see?

As far as the rest of the day goes, we've been learning about geometric solids (3D shapes) in Math. We read a book called Mummy Math on Monday and made some observations about the shapes. Tuesday we actually built the shapes out of toothpicks and gum drops. We counted faces (the flat surfaces of shapes), edges (where faces meet) and vertices (where edges meet). Look at some photos from our classroom. The students were able to play around with the toothpicks and gum drops to create their own shapes after we finished the lesson.

Mummy Math (Neuschwander) - a lesson in geometric solids

Our shape chart to record our observations, toothpicks (edges), and gum drops (vertices)

"Look! I made a campfire!"

Counting the edges of the pyramid...

"I made a hexagon!"

Our fingers got a little sticky...

A dancing person :)

In other subjects we are working on:

Persuasive Letters (Writing)

Preparing for Reconciliation (Religion)

Open and Closed Syllable Words and Words with AU, AW, AL (Phonics/Spelling)

Economics (Social Studies)

We are excited for the field trip on Thursday to Navy Pier to see the Children's Museum!