Zones of Regulation

Hello Parents,

Part of our social/emotional curriculum this year will be focused on the Zones of Regulation. There are four "zones" that we will be discussing:


Green - Calm, happy, focused, in control. This is where we want to be.

Yellow - Excited, nervous, anxious, upset, scared. We aren't feeling comfortable and we want to find our way back to green.

Red - Out of control, angry, terrified, overly excited. We may need some help to get back down to yellow and then green.

Blue -  Tired, sad, sick. How can we help our friends who are blue feel better?


We talk about how everyone finds themselves in each of these zones at some point, what causes us to be in these zones, and if we aren't where we want to be, how we can get back to green.

Mrs. E shared an activity with us recently where we were shown a feeling and had to decide what zone it belonged in. This helps us to better identify how we are feeling, and how we can respond to these feelings.

These are the good feelings we would like to be feeling.

We all feel "yellow" at some time or another, and we will discuss how we can get back to green.

What causes us to feel "red"? What can you do if you see someone in the "red" zone?

It is ok to feel blue sometimes, but what can we do to help you feel better?

Sincerely,
Mr. Kilham

Math is EVERYWHERE!

Why is math important in our world?

Think of how often you use math in your everyday life. Sometimes we forget that numbers are all around us. Together we brainstormed a list of all the places second graders see and use math, and we were amazed and how many we came up with!

To begin the year, we are focusing on digits and place value. Our students have been using math tools to build numbers by hundreds, tens, and ones. we have learned that just like a letter, a digit is a number (0-9) that is used to build all other numbers. We've discussed standard form (732), word form (seven hundred thirty-two), and expanded form (700 + 30 + 2) as different ways to express a number. We use this understanding of place value to compare hands-on games and activities give them the opportunity to put their new knowledge to use in an engaging setting.

Reilly and Whit building and writing three digit numbers.

Forrest, Emma, and Nico work as a team to tackle this task.

The carpet is a busy place in our classroom!

Sincerely,
Mr. Kilham

Common Core State Standards we are covering:

Understanding Place Value:
1. Understand that the three digits of a three-digit number represent amounts of hundreds, tens, and ones; e.g., 706 equals 7 hundreds, 0 tens, and 6 ones.
3.  Read and write numbers to 1,000 using base-ten numerals, number names, and expanded form.

Happy First Day of School!

Hello families!

It was so great to have all of our classmates together for our first day of the school year! We spent our day learning all about each other, our classroom, and what we're looking forward to learning this year.

I wanted to briefly share with you all some information about our classroom.

Your students came home today with a "take-home binder." This will travel back and forth between home and school every day, taking with it homework, important information for you, and bringing in any information or notes for me or the office.

Homework in second grade is given Monday - Thursday and is 10 minutes of reading, and 10 minutes of assigned work.

The second grade students in my class will have a snack time and a brief motor break each morning around 10:00.  Second graders will not eat lunch until 12:30.  It can be a long, hungry morning until lunchtime arrives with no mid morning snack to nibble.  Please make sure your child has a snack each school day to tide them over until lunch time. Due to food allergies, Steward School is a ‘nut-free environment’.   When providing snack/lunch for your child, please be sure it does not contain nut products.  

Tomorrow I will send home a permission slip for your child to appear in my blog. The slip has detailed information, and there will be no personal identifying information, as I will be identifying students by just their first name. Please send this in so I can start posting pictures of your students! :)

Parent Seminar will be held on September 17th from 6:00-6:45.   Please come, check out our room and meet me!


Looking forward to a fantastic year!

Sincerely,
Mr. Kilham

Summer Fun!

Greetings soon-to-be second graders!

I hope you all have been having a wonderful summer. I can't wait to hear about all the fantastic things you (and your dinosaurs) did over our break! I've been spending my time hiking, biking, reading, working (I drive a boat in the summer!), and getting ready for our year ahead. I hope you are as excited as I am to start learning together.

I will be sending a letter home soon with more information, but in the meantime if you have any questions you can email me at bkilham@topsfieldps.org.

Author Share

As our year draws to an end, we took the time this week to reflect on some of the hard work our students have completed throughout second grade. I certainly enjoyed seeing the progress they have made as we pulled out their work, old and new, and it seemed as though our families did as well!

Thank you to everyone who could join us, what a great way to celebrate our year!

-Mr. Kilham

Gloucester Maritime Museum

We had an excellent time at the Maritime Museum today! We learned about how our skeletons are similar to whales' and how the shape of different fish give them different adaptations. We got to hold some interesting sea life and observe some of the tiniest creatures in the sea with the help of powerful microscopes. And, personally, I was SO impressed with our class's behavior as well as how much they already knew from their ocean animal research. 

Thank you to our parent chaperones who were able to join us today: Mrs. Strunk, Mrs. Licata, Mrs. Leiss, and Mrs. Gustafson!

Praying Mantises

What a cool way to end the week! Mr. Sandman had given our class two praying manis eggs last week, and we were beginning to wonder if they would ever hatch. But just this morning, lo and behold! One of the pouches opened and out came TONS of the little critters! We made some great observations today, but because praying mantises are much harder to feed than butterflies I had to set them free this afternoon. So if you happen to find a praying mantis this summer, it may be one of our little friends :)

They were white when they first came out!

Look at them all...

And they just kept coming!

By the afternoon they were green

On my hand, getting ready to go.