Week 9 Second Grade

The Old Woman’s Nose (Fiction, Level 5, Stage 2) by Joy Cowley

Jump, Kangaroo, Jump (Fiction, Level 7) by Stuart J. Murphy

A cloud woman who blows her nose and out comes a parrot, a princess, a dragon, knight and more! A kangaroo jumping through field day events with a koala and a few funny fractions! That’s what this week was all about for AlphaSkills in our second grade home classroom.

The activity I want to highlight this week is the math activities for Jump, Kangaroo, Jump. Before reading the book I asked Malachi to draw 6 squares at the top of his dry erase board and pretend that the squares need to be shared, or divided, between 2 students, and describe how to do this. Then I helped him draw a circled around 3 squares and another circle around three more squares and label each set as ½. Then we talked about how ½ + ½ is 1 whole, and he wrote the number sentence ½ + ½ = 1. After reading the book he drew 6 more squares on the dry erase board, and I asked him to divide them among 3 friends. We talked about thirds, and he wrote the number sentence 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1. Then we followed the same process for sixths, and he wrote the number sentence 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 = 1. Also, he drew 10 squares, and we talked about tenths, and he drew 8 squares and we talked about eighths. T

As usual, these activities really helped Malachi learn so much more than just reading. Fractions is a new concept for him, and this week he made real progress toward understanding them thanks to AlphaSkills. For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.