Soil and Garden of Eden

Chumash: The Second Creation Story

Did you know many scholars believe there are actually two creation stories in the Torah? Your second grader does! Before break we finished the first creation story, with the culmination of The Seventh Day, Shabbat. We began to learn the Friday night kiddush which comes from the second chapter of the Torah.

This week we started to learn the second creation story. We identified similarities and differences between the two texts. One detail we noticed is that God is called by a different name in this story. Another difference is that Adam is created before the animals, and in a different way. We focused in on one verse of Adam’s creation, and practiced reading it and acting it out. See videos below.

Second Grade Red Tutim- Creation of Adam from Hannah Senesh on Vimeo.

Second grade- Reading and Acting out Creation of Adam from Hannah Senesh on Vimeo.

Math

This week we have been working on mental math strategies as well as addition and subtraction strategies. and realized that we have learned so many strategies! We have learned to add and subtract by “friendly numbers” like 10 or 100, and then to add the difference to the answer so that we can add and subtract in our heads more easily. Some of us still prefer to write out our problems in “up and down math”, some of us draw bars models, some of us do regrouping, and some of us use number bonds to break apart numbers. With all these strategies we played the game “be the teacher” where every volunteer picked a problem, came up to the board, and taught the class their strategy. Next week we will be working on manuals with all of our strategies so that we have a resource to use when solving addition and subtraction problems. We also will be learning about how to estimate and round next week- stay tuned!

Ask your child to explain a math strategy to you!

Writing

This week we did a lot of work with spelling. We practiced writing words with different sound patterns, and finding words within words- like “oil” inside the word “spoil”. We added some tricky words to our Word Wall, and discussed how sometimes the way words sound, is not how they are spelling. An example of this is the word “been” on our Word Wall, which many of us sometimes spell as “bin”, because it does sound like that! We completed several word sort activities, like writing words with different writing utensils, making word searches out of our words, and of course sorting them as fast as we can!

Over the weekend, spell words of objects around the house. See if there are any vowel patterns!

Science

In science this week we delved into our soil exploration. We first brainstormed questions we have about soil and discussed what we already know about soil. Second graders then examined actual soil from our garden- we found sticks and rocks, along with leaves and twigs. We were hoping for some worms, but there were none! However, some might be joining our science class soon! We recorded our observations and categorized items that could break down into the soil, versus items that cannot break down.

Over the weekend, explore some soil in your neighborhood and see what you can find!

Art with Iviva

For the second time this year, we got to experiment with printmaking. After drawing images of birds inspired by the many species that migrate through Israel from Europe and Africa, we traced our drawings onto foam. With Iviva’s help, we rolled ink onto the foam, pressed a paper on top, and peeled off the paper to reveal our prints.