The act of giving is the heart of happiness and community.
“Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself in stained from the world”. James 1:27

Over the last few weeks second grade collected jeans and and board games to donate to a local non-profit in our community. For the Sake of One’s mission statement reads: To share God’s love with local children and families by providing emotional, physical and spiritual support while serving as a hub to connect, equip, and empower all stakeholders in the child welfare community.
For the Sake of One started as a small group of people in a living room wanting to help solve the foster care problem in this area, and has grown into a stand alone non-profit helping the foster care community in Southwest Arkansas and Northeast Texas. When the opportunity arose to fulfill a need, second grade jump into action and collected 25 board games to be used in the FSO supervised visitation rooms. More than 50 pairs of children’s jeans were collected for the Blessing Boutique, a store where families can shop for their children’s clothing for free.

As part of the community service project second grade gave the FSO flower beds an upgrade. Students worked diligently for over three hours picking weeds, digging holes, planting flowers, spreading topsoil, and layering mulch. The final result was a total transformation!

Angela Coston, founder and executive director of FSO gave a tour of the building and explained how donations will be used. Second grade was able to see their collective efforts in a very concrete way.

Thank you Angela for allowing SJDS to partner with you and bring happiness to our community. This project will not be soon forgotten.

Little birds fly over

And oh, how sweet they sing!

To tell the happy children

That once again ‘it’s spring.
—Celia Thaxter

Spring has shown its glorious face on campus at SJDS and second grade is soaking up the warmer temperatures. Outside recess is back! We took a trip to middle school to help unload over 300, gallon milk jugs to donate to the Lunar Habitat project the 7th and 8th graders plan to build. We are anticipating a tour of the habitat when it is complete.

Mrs. Burkes’ 3rd graders presented their biographies in the lower school commons and we were able to attend. Our class was presented golf tees from Tiger Woods, a sparkling juice toast with the Queen of England, and we were even serenaded by the one and only Elvis Presley. Our class is very excited to do this next year in 3rd grade!

In science, we learned that laminin is the glue that holds our cells together. Laminin can be seen using an electron microscope and is shaped like a cross. We learned that God reminds us that we are His creation and is a picture of how Jesus holds our bodies, our souls and everything together. We created our own laminin models using beads, pipe cleaner and sticks we found on the playground.

Second grade recently had a special visit from a very talented storyteller. The class was amazed and tickled to death at the silly stories we heard. A special thank you goes to Drew’s Nonnie for spending her afternoon telling us some amazing stories.

February is a month full of love and in 2nd grade we made sure to show our grandparents lots of love with personalized photo holders. Students used wire, beads and rocks to design and create photograph holders and then took pictures to share a special message of love to people we love most. Happy Grandparent’s Day to all the grands that make these kids so happy.

Students just competed their animal research projects and presented habitat dioramas to their classmates and the students of lower school. Each presentation was so good and the kids were so proud of one another. We all learned a lot about animals, habitats, predators, and many other things.

Being a student is easy. Learning requires actual work” —William Crawford

In technology at Saint James the learning fun never ends! This week students built robots and wrote code that enabled their robots to drive! Their task was to build a robot with an attachment that would move small pieces of pipe to and from designated areas. Second grade students were surprised at all they were able to learn!
Last week, we were invited to attend the Middle School Colonial Days Fair. Students listened as middle schoolers shared all the had learned about colonial times. Presentations we’re exceptional and we were so happy to attend.

This week second grade learned all the ways to spell the long vowel sound letter u makes: u, u_e, _ew, and _ue. In second grade, we like to have fun as much as we can so, shaving cream spelling was a must! Second graders at Saint James are not given a list of spelling words to memorize, rather they are tested on their knowledge of the different spelling patterns sounds make. This strategy helps students with spelling and reading.

We are also researching animals and their habitats. Students were able to use personal Chromebooks to discover basic facts about animals and also interesting information they would like to share. Students will use the information they gather to write research papers and present their findings to their peers in Lower School.

This Friday, our class attended the First Grade Zoo. We listened as first graders shared presentations about zoo animals.
We are always busy learning here in grade two and we love it that way!

Second grade had a visitor last week! Mae the Boykin Spaniel came to Lower School for show and tell and the second grade was in love! We all took turns playing, petting and loving on Mae. Since her visit, there have been many class discussions on what type of pet would be a good class pet.

We recently read the folktale Stone Soup. Second grade learned about the elements of a folktale. Folktales are passed from generation to generation and always teach a lesson. Good always prevails over evil in folktales. In the folktale Stone Soup a stranger convinces a village suffering from drought and famine to share their food with one another and learn the lesson of looking out for one another and sharing with those in need. Our essential vocabulary word was contribution. Each villager made a contribution to the soup and learned to be happy together again. This week students brought their contributions to class and we enjoyed a bowl of stone soup together. Some of the class love the soup and other we’re not so thrilled. We all had a great time feasting together!