I have such exciting news!  Our first Flat Stanley has found its way back to Avoca West.  Stanley travelled all the way down to the rural community of Lincoln, Illinois.  He saw some great things there and brought a ton of pictures back to share with us.  Please make sure your child has mailed out their Flat Stanley by now, so we can get many more back in the next few weeks.  As a reminder, they are due by March 15!  

Wow!  What a great show the Second Grade students put on last night.  I was so impressed with their musical abilities.  I hope all enjoyed the performance as much as me!

Thank you to our Mystery Reader, Heather Snyder, for coming back to Avoca and reading to us.  Some of you may remember her from the past few years as one of our gym teachers.  She has moved on to another job and we miss her.  We appreciate that she came back and read to us.  Here is a fun picture from her visit.

Avoca will once again be participating in the Six Flags “Read to Succeed” program.  This is an optional reading program which is open to students in grades k-6.  Students must read (or be read to) for 6 hours or 360 minutes during the month of February.  All students that meet their goal, will receive a free ticket to Six Flags.  An information letter and reading log is attached.  All k-5 logs are due back to Mrs. Geidner at the Avoca West library by Thursday, February 28th.  6th graders should turn their logs into Mrs. Stotz by the same date.  Six Flags will not accept any forms submitted after this date.  Please contact Mrs. Geidner with any questions.

This past week, the Second Grade welcomed Kenny from Mad Science to conduct some fun and interesting electricity experiments.  The activities were all hands-on, educational, and fun.  Here are some pictures from the day.

Over the past few weeks, the students have been working on writing expository paragraphs.  One paragraph they wrote was all about how to blow a bubble.  Before we got started, each child got to practice blowing bubbles.  Here are some fun bubble pictures and a picture of their final product.

We just did our first Reader’s Theater performances for the year.  The children really enjoyed performing for each other.  Here are some pictures of each group!!  Enjoy!

We are currently studying a unit on letter writing.  The students are learning about the 5 parts of a letter.  These parts are the heading, greeting,  body, closing, and the signature.

We used these parts to write the following letter together:

November 5, 2012

Dear Parents, 

    Thank you for helping at our Halloween Party.  Our party would not have been so fun if you had not come.  The activities, games, and crafts were so fun because of you!

                                                                    Sincerely,

                                                                    Mrs. Greenberg’s Class

Thanks again to our Mystery Reader for the spooky Halloween story.  It was a great way to start off Halloween morning.  

Thank you so much to one of our student’s grandmothers for being our Mystery Reader last Friday.  The students really enjoyed her clues and had trouble figuring out who the Mystery Reader would be.  Once I gave out the last clue, we had it all figured out.  Thanks for sharing one of your family’s favorite books.