Plurals and Science

In spelling today, we learned about plurals. A plural is a word used to describe more than one of something. For example, the plural of dog is dogs and the plural of box is boxes.

Sometimes we need to just add an "s" to a noun to make it plural, but sometimes we need to add "es". It can be tricky to know which to do, but we found an easy way that works with most words!

After sorting lots of words and looking carefully at how they're spelled, we discovered that words that end with s, x, ch and sh all need es added to make them plural. Most other words just need an s added. We should be able to remember that and it'll make spelling plurals easy. There are some exceptions to the rule, such as calf becoming calves, but we'll learn about those another day!

We've been working on some interesting art this week. After writing recounts of our holidays, Mrs N took photos of us posing like we were doing something we wrote about in our recounts. We then cut ourselves out of the photos and drew a background for them. It was fun to do and we think they look really interesting.

Brydie playing Wii Bowling

Stephany on a giant jumping pillow

Julie getting her cast off at the doctor's

Jacinta with the crayfish she caught

This term, we're learning all about water. In Science today, Miss J helped us do an experiment to test which substances dissolve in water. Dissolving means that it becomes completely mixed in with the water. She gave us some cups with cold and warm water in them and things like sugar, coffee, tea leaves, glitter, sand and salt. We mixed them with both types of water and observed what happened. We noticed that some things dissolved and some didn't.Sugar, salt and coffee all dissolved easily, especially in the warm water. The tea leaves dissolved a bit and turned the water brown, but there were still bits floating around. Glitter and sand didn't dissolve at all!

Tea leaves in warm and cold water

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

A New Term

We're back from holidays and the new term is looking busy already!

Danica and Jenaya had particularly exciting holidays because their mums both had a baby! Jenaya's new little brother is named Craig and Danica's little sister is Eirinn. We've had a peek at them both and they're gorgeous!

Jenaya and Craig

While new babies are pretty exciting, the other Smarties had good holidays too! Some of us went swimming, ten-pin bowling, to watch a soccer match, or performed in dancing concerts. Julie and Anastacia finally had their plaster casts removed too! We've written recounts about our holidays and you can read some of them on our class writing blog.

We're very lucky to have Miss J, a student teacher, in our room this term. We're really looking forward to all the exciting lessons she has planned for us. She's already been teaching us about some new shapes, like rhombuses and hexagons. Today, we drew animals using a shape as part of the body.

 Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

100th Day

Today was the 100th day of being in Year 2! We celebrated with some activities about the number 100.

Mrs N modified a shopping catalogue so that all the foods were whole dollars, with no cents. We needed to write a shopping list that totaled exactly $100 and we could choose anything we wanted. It was pretty fun to imagine doing some shopping! We used a calculator and tally marks to check our totals.

Another activity involved counting 100 objects and then weighing them, so we could compare how much one hundred of each thing weighs. We counted and measured popsticks, matchsticks, cotton balls, cotton tips, grains of rice, straws, plastic tiles, feathers, counters, plastic teddies and lots of other things. We discovered that 100 grains of rice were the lightest and 100 plastic teddies were the heaviest.

Finally, we began writing 100 words. Our classroom is full of useful words, so it was easy to find enough, but we ran out of time! Maybe we'll get to finish it tomorrow.

Our 100th day of Year 2 was great fun!

 

 

 Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

NAIDOC Week

This week is NAIDOC Week, which is a time when we celebrate the culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We spent the morning doing all sorts of fun things! Our guest speaker brought in some bush tucker, which is food that traditional Aborigines gather from plants to eat. We tasted Muntharis, Dumbari and Bunya Bunya.

Some of us painted our faces, not with paint, but with ochre mixed with water! We tapped rocks together to get dust from them and then stirred in enough water to make a paste. We used our fingers to make dots and lines on our faces.

We also got a chance to play a didgeridoo. These are musical instruments made from the hollow trunks of trees. Traditionally, only men and boys can use them, so the boys were allowed to use the real didgeridoos. The girls weren't left out though! They played didgeridoos made from bamboo instead. We had to keep our lips loose and blow raspberries into the end of the tube to try to make a noise. This video shows what it's supposed to sounds like. It was hard, but lots of fun!

 Love from The Smarties and Mrs N