Week 27 — Printable Lesson Packet

Mathematics

Objective: Students will identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, and hexagons by counting sides and vertices (2.G.A.1).

1. 10 min — Warm-Up: Spiral from Week 26: draw a small bar graph with squares 3, triangles 5, circles 2 and ask, 'How many more triangles than circles?' Then ask, 'What makes a triangle a triangle?' and listen for the number three.
2. 15 min — Mini-Lesson: Draw a triangle, a quadrilateral, a pentagon, and a hexagon. For each, trace the sides with a finger while counting, then tap and count the vertices, the corners where two sides meet. Write the name and both counts under each: triangle 3 and 3, quadrilateral 4 and 4, pentagon 5 and 5, hexagon 6 and 6.
3. 15 min — Practice: Your child builds each shape with toothpicks or straws on the table, using one stick per side, and records sides and vertices in a table. Then they make a wobbly, stretched version of each and confirm the counts stay the same.
4. 5 min — Wrap-Up: Ask, 'Is a square a quadrilateral? Is a rectangle?' Guide your child to say yes because both have 4 sides and 4 vertices.

Materials: toothpicks or straws, paper, pencil

English Language Arts

Objective: Students will identify the different points of view of the kid and the ant in 'Hey, Little Ant' and begin revising their recount with temporal words (RL.2.6, W.2.3).

1. 15 min — Read-Aloud: Hey, Little Ant: Say: 'Last week you built on each other's ideas. This week we listen to two characters who disagree.' Read 'Hey, Little Ant' by Phillip and Hannah Hoose with two voices: you read the kid and your child reads the ant. Stop at the final question about what the kid should do and do not answer it yet.
2. 10 min — Mini-Lesson: Point of View: Explain that point of view means who is talking and what that character wants. Make a two-column chart: 'The kid wants ___ because ___' and 'The ant wants ___ because ___' and fill each with two reasons from the text (the ant has a family and a job; the kid says his friends would laugh).
3. 15 min — Guided Reading: Best Argument: Reread the book, switching voices so your child now reads the kid. Your child picks the single strongest argument from each character and reads it in that character's voice, then you hold a stem conversation on 'Who makes the better point?'
4. 15 min — Writing Workshop: Temporal Words: Pull the Week 25 recount out of the folder. Post a chart of temporal words: first, next, then, after that, later, meanwhile, finally, at last. Your child rereads the draft, circles any time words already there, and adds at least three more so a reader can follow the order.
5. 10 min — Phonics: R-Controlled ar: Word cards: car, farm, star, park, yard, shark, garden, market, sharp, harm, start, barn. Remind your child that 'bossy r' changes the vowel sound, read the pile, and connect 'market' to Market Street. Your child writes four words and underlines 'ar' in each.

Materials: Hey, Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose, chart paper, marker, stem chart, recount draft, pencil, index cards, writing notebook

Science

Objective: Students will observe that plants need sunlight and water to grow and begin to explain that animals depend on plants for food and shelter (2-LS2-1, 2-LS2-2).

1. 5 min — Science Question of the Week: Look at last week's Animal Groups Poster. Ask: 'What would happen to every animal on this poster if all the plants disappeared?' Let your child think out loud. Write the week's question: 'How do living things depend on each other?'
2. 20 min — Investigation: Bean Sprout Sun-and-Water Test: Set up four clear cups labeled A to D, each with a wet paper towel and 3 dried beans pressed against the side. A: sunny window, water daily. B: sunny window, no more water. C: dark closet, water daily. D: dark closet, no water. Your child predicts which will sprout and draws the setup. While waiting for sprouts, cut open an apple and a bell pepper and find the seeds; discuss that the fruit is the plant's way of getting animals to carry seeds.
3. 5 min — Wrap-Up: Say: 'Plants need sun and water. What do animals need from plants?' List food, shade, homes, and oxygen on an index card. Set a reminder to check and water cups A and C daily.

Materials: 4 clear cups, paper towels, 12 dried beans, water, masking tape and marker, apple, bell pepper, knife (adult), index card

Mathematics

Objective: Students will go on a shape hunt, sorting real objects by number of sides and vertices and explaining their reasoning (2.G.A.1).

1. 10 min — Warm-Up: Play 'Guess My Shape': say 'I have 5 sides and 5 vertices' and your child names it. Do five rounds, including one square described as 'I have 4 equal sides and 4 vertices.'
2. 15 min — Mini-Lesson: Explain that shapes are named by attributes, meaning the number of sides and vertices, not by how big or which way they turn. Show a book cover, a slice of bread, a stop sign photo, and a soccer ball patch and count sides on each together.
3. 15 min — Practice: Your child hunts the house for at least 8 flat shapes on windows, tiles, signs, cracker boxes, and quilts, sketching each one and writing its name and side count on a recording sheet with columns for 3, 4, 5, and 6 sides.
4. 5 min — Wrap-Up: Ask, 'Which column was easiest to fill? Which was hardest?' Point out that quadrilaterals are everywhere and pentagons are rare in a house.

Materials: paper, pencil, clipboard or hardcover book to lean on, household objects

English Language Arts

Objective: Students will use past-tense irregular verbs in their recount and identify who is telling a story in a self-chosen book (L.2.1d, RL.2.6).

1. 15 min — Shared Reading: The Ant's Side: Reread the ant's verses only. Tie to science: 'This week you are learning how living things depend on each other. The ant says it has a nest to feed.' List three jobs the ant claims to do and ask whether the kid ever answers those points.
2. 10 min — Mini-Lesson: Irregular Past-Tense Verbs: A recount tells what already happened, so verbs are in the past. Chart pairs: go/went, see/saw, say/said, take/took, run/ran, eat/ate, sit/sat, hide/hid, tell/told, come/came. Say a present-tense sentence ('I see a bus') and your child flips it ('I saw a bus').
3. 15 min — Independent Reading: Who Is Telling?: Your child reads a library book for ten minutes with one job: figure out who is telling the story. Then your child tells you whether a character is narrating (look for I, me, my) or an outside narrator, and reads one line in that narrator's voice. Support: you read the first page together and circle the pronouns. Stretch: your child finds a place where a second character's point of view differs.
4. 15 min — Writing Workshop: Adding Dialogue: Your child finds one place in the recount where someone spoke and adds a line of dialogue with quotation marks: 'Hold on tight,' said my dad. Then replace 'said' with a stronger verb (whispered, shouted, laughed). Check the draft for irregular verbs and fix any that are in present tense.
5. 10 min — Phonics: R-Controlled or: Word cards: corn, fork, storm, horse, morning, short, north, porch, born, sport, forest, torn. Read, then have your child find the two words that fit the ant's world (forest, morning) and write a sentence with them.

Materials: Hey, Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose, paper, pencil, chart paper, marker, library book, recount draft, index cards, writing notebook

Social Studies

Objective: Students will explain that producers make goods or provide services and consumers use them, and identify times they are each one (D2.Eco.3.K-2, D2.Eco.6.K-2).

1. 10 min — Read-Aloud and Discussion: Read 'The Little Red Hen' (any classic picture book version, such as the Paul Galdone edition). Pause at each 'Not I' and ask who is doing the work. Define producer as someone who makes a good or does a service, and consumer as someone who uses it. Ask: 'Who was the producer of the bread? Who wanted to be the consumers? Why did the hen say no?'
2. 15 min — Hands-On Activity: Follow the Bread: Take a slice of bread from your kitchen. On a strip of paper, your child draws the chain of producers: farmer grows wheat, miller grinds flour, baker bakes bread, truck driver delivers, store clerk sells, your family eats. Cut the strip into cards and shuffle; your child puts them back in order and labels each person P for producer. Then your child holds the bread and says, 'I am the consumer.'
3. 5 min — Quick Write: Sentence frames: 'I was a consumer today when I ___.' and 'I was a producer when I ___ (made a drawing, helped cook, cleaned up).' Add to the booklet.

Materials: The Little Red Hen by Paul Galdone (library), slice of bread, paper strip, scissors, crayons, Needs and Wants booklet, pencil

Mathematics

Objective: Students will draw shapes with a given number of sides or vertices, including non-standard versions (2.G.A.1).

1. 10 min — Warm-Up: Draw a hexagon and a pentagon quickly and ask your child to count the sides of each without you telling the name. Then ask them to draw a shape with exactly 4 sides that is not a square.
2. 15 min — Mini-Lesson: Model drawing with a ruler: place 5 dots, connect each dot to the next, and close the shape to make a pentagon. Then draw a long skinny hexagon and a tall thin triangle to show that shapes can look different and still keep their name.
3. 15 min — Practice: Your child draws with a ruler: two different triangles, two different quadrilaterals, a pentagon, and a hexagon, labeling each with its name and the number of vertices. Support: give a dot-to-dot outline for the pentagon and hexagon. Stretch: ask them to draw a quadrilateral with no square corners and a hexagon that is not the honeycomb shape, then explain how they know each is correct.
4. 5 min — Wrap-Up: Have your child pick their strangest-looking shape and prove its name by counting sides out loud.

Materials: ruler, paper, pencil, crayons

English Language Arts

Objective: Students will contrast the wolf's point of view in 'The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!' with the familiar version and write two possible endings for their recount (RL.2.6, RL.2.9, W.2.3).

1. 15 min — Read-Aloud: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!: First have your child retell the usual three pigs story in one minute. Then read 'The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!' by Jon Scieszka in the wolf's slick voice, stopping after the first sneeze and at the newspaper ending. Ask: 'Who is telling this version, and what does he want us to believe?'
2. 10 min — Mini-Lesson: Voices Show Point of View: Read the same event, the straw house falling, in the wolf's voice and then in a pig's voice, and ask which details each teller would leave out. Your child chooses a voice for the ant and a voice for the kid and explains the choice using one line from 'Hey, Little Ant.'
3. 15 min — Guided Reading: Do We Believe the Wolf?: Hold a stem conversation on 'Should we believe the wolf?' where every turn quotes a page (the cup of sugar, the cold, the 'ham dinner' line). Tie to social studies: the wolf says he was only a consumer looking for sugar; ask whether that excuse works.
4. 15 min — Writing Workshop: Two Endings: Look at how three books close: CJ says he is glad they came, Rosa falls asleep in the chair, the wolf claims he was framed. Chart three kinds of endings: a feeling, a lesson, a look forward. Your child writes two different endings for the recount and stars the one to keep.
5. 10 min — Phonics: R-Controlled er, ir, ur: Word cards: her, fern, herd, bird, girl, first, dirt, shirt, turn, burn, nurse, hurt. Explain that all three spellings say the same sound, so spellers must remember which one. Sort into three piles and write one word from each.

Materials: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! by Jon Scieszka, Hey, Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose, stem chart, recount draft, pencil, chart paper, index cards, marker, writing notebook

Science

Objective: Students will model how animals help plants by carrying pollen and seeds, and record early results from the bean cups (2-LS2-1, 2-LS2-2).

1. 5 min — Review: Check all four bean cups. Your child draws what each looks like today (usually A is first to swell or sprout). Ask: 'Which cup looks most alive? What did it get that the others did not?'
2. 20 min — Deeper Investigation: Cheese Puff Pollinators: Cut 4 paper flowers and put a spoonful of orange cheese puff dust (crush a few in a bag) or cocoa powder in the center of two of them. Your child's hand is a bee: land on a dusty flower, then on a clean one, and see the powder transfer. Now do it with a pipe cleaner bee and a cotton ball bee to test which carries more. Then do the seed test: press a sock over your hand and drag it across a lawn or a patch of dried grass and weeds; count the seeds that stick. Support: you crush the puffs and count with your child. Stretch: your child sketches what a real bee's fuzzy legs look like and explains why fuzz helps.
3. 5 min — Data Discussion: Ask: 'How does the bee depend on the flower? How does the flower depend on the bee? Where did the sock seeds come from?' Say: 'This goes both ways. That is called interdependence.'

Materials: bean cups, notebook, pencil, paper, scissors, cheese puffs or cocoa powder, zip bag, pipe cleaner, cotton ball, old sock

Mathematics

Objective: Students will identify cubes by counting faces, edges, and vertices and compare them with flat shapes (2.G.A.1).

1. 10 min — Warm-Up: Set out a die, a tissue box, and a square piece of paper. Ask, 'Which of these can you pick up and turn all the way around and still see square parts?' Introduce the word solid for shapes with thickness.
2. 15 min — Mini-Lesson: Hold a die or sugar cube and count its faces, the flat sides, by marking each with a small sticker: 6 faces. Count vertices: 8. Explain that every face of a cube is a square. Ask, 'How many sides does one face have?' (4).
3. 15 min — Practice: Your child finds three cubes or near-cubes at home, such as dice, blocks, a bouillon cube box, and three flat shapes, and sorts them on two mats labeled Flat Shapes and Cubes. For each cube they write 6 faces and 8 vertices; for each flat shape they write the name and side count.
4. 5 min — Wrap-Up: Ask, 'Is a cereal box a cube?' Guide your child to notice the faces are rectangles, not all squares, so it is a box but not a cube.

Materials: dice or small wooden blocks, tissue box, small stickers, paper, pencil

English Language Arts

Objective: Students will record a retelling of a story that includes characters, setting, problem, events, and ending, and revise their recount into a clean copy (SL.2.4, SL.2.5, W.2.3).

1. 15 min — Shared Reading: Reader's Theater: 'Hey, Little Ant' is a song, so chant or sing it as a two-person reader's theater with each of you standing for your character. Run it twice, and the second time your child adds a gesture for the ant's strongest line.
2. 10 min — Mini-Lesson: Five-Finger Retell: Hold up a hand: thumb is characters, pointer is setting, middle is problem, ring is events in order, pinky is ending. Model a six-sentence retell of 'The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!' touching each finger as you go.
3. 15 min — Guided Reading: The Recorded Retelling: Your child practices a five-finger retell of 'Hey, Little Ant' twice, using 'first, next, then, finally.' Then record it on a phone, listen back together, and check off each finger; rerecord once if a finger is missing.
4. 15 min — Writing Workshop: Clean Copy: Your child rewrites the recount as a clean copy with a checklist: at least three temporal words, one line of dialogue, past-tense verbs, and the starred ending. Edit together for capital letters and end marks.
5. 10 min — Phonics: Mixed R-Controlled Sort: Shuffle fifteen cards: car, storm, bird, park, fork, girl, farm, horse, turn, star, nurse, short, shirt, yard, her. Your child sorts into ar, or, and er/ir/ur columns, then reads each column with a timer to beat Tuesday's pace.

Materials: Hey, Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose, phone or recorder, recount draft, lined paper, pencil, index cards, timer

Social Studies

Objective: Students will act as producers by making a simple good and describe the resources and work it took (D2.Eco.3.K-2, D2.Eco.6.K-2).

1. 10 min — Review and Extend: Reshuffle the bread chain cards and race the timer. Then ask: 'What did the baker need to make bread?' List ingredients (flour, water, yeast), tools (oven, bowl), and work (mixing, waiting). Explain that producers use resources and effort, and that is why goods cost money.
2. 15 min — Project Work: Be a Producer: Your child produces a real good: a batch of 6 no-bake energy balls (1 cup oats, 1/2 cup peanut or sunflower butter, 2 tablespoons honey, mixed and rolled) or 6 hand-drawn greeting cards. Before starting, your child lists the resources needed on a card. Afterward, ask: 'Who will be the consumers of your good? What would you charge for one, and why?'
3. 5 min — Share Progress: Your child offers the good to family members and says, 'I am the producer, you are the consumer.' Record the number of consumers on the booklet page.

Materials: bread chain cards, timer, oats, nut or seed butter, honey, bowl, spoon (or card stock and markers), index card, pencil, Needs and Wants booklet

Mathematics

Objective: Students will demonstrate that they can identify and draw triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes by their attributes (2.G.A.1).

1. 10 min — Warm-Up: Riddle round: 'I am a solid with 6 square faces' (cube). 'I have 6 sides and 6 vertices' (hexagon). 'I have 4 sides and my corners are all square' (square or rectangle). Do six riddles fast.
2. 15 min — Review Mini-Lesson: Build a shape chart together with five rows: triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon, cube. Your child fills in the number of sides or faces and the number of vertices, and draws a small example in each row.
3. 15 min — Weekly Assessment: Show your child six hand-drawn shapes, including a stretched pentagon and a tilted rectangle, and have them name each and write the number of sides and vertices. Then they draw a triangle, a quadrilateral, a pentagon, and a hexagon with a ruler and write the number of faces on a cube.
4. 5 min — Wrap-Up: Reflect: 'What surprised you on the shape hunt?' Preview next week: 'We will cut rectangles into rows and columns of squares and count them.'

Materials: ruler, paper, pencil, a die or block

Assessment: Identify and draw triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons by attributes

English Language Arts

Objective: Students will write from a character's point of view, publish a well-elaborated narrative recount, and spell r-controlled words in dictation (RL.2.6, W.2.3, RF.2.3).

1. 10 min — Reading Celebration: Listen to Thursday's recorded retelling together. Ask: 'Last week you recorded a conversation about saving and spending. What did you do better this time?' and let your child answer with a stem.
2. 15 min — Reading Response: Your child writes three sentences from the ant's point of view telling the kid what to do, then one sentence from the kid's point of view answering. Check that each side uses 'I' and gives a reason from the book.
3. 15 min — Publishing and Author's Chair: The Recount: Your child adds a cover drawing and reads the finished recount from the author's chair. Listeners respond only with stems ('My favorite part was ... because ...', 'I want to add on ...'), and the recount goes into the portfolio.
4. 10 min — Phonics Check: R-Controlled Vowels: Dictate eight words: farm, storm, bird, turn, her, shark, horse, girl. Then dictate 'The nurse parked her car by the barn.' Your child underlines each r-controlled team.
5. 15 min — Independent Reading: Fifteen minutes in a library book, ending with your child naming who is telling the story and reading one line in that voice.

Materials: phone or recorder, writing notebook, pencil, Hey, Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose, clean copy, crayons, portfolio folder, library book

Assessment: Recorded five-finger retelling scored for characters, setting, problem, events in order, and ending; published narrative recount with at least three temporal words, dialogue, past-tense verbs, and a closing; point-of-view response; dictation of eight r-controlled words.

Science

Objective: Students will use evidence from the bean cups and pollinator model to conclude that plants need sun and water and that plants and animals depend on each other (2-LS2-1, 2-LS2-2).

1. 10 min — Drawing Conclusions: Line up cups A to D and have your child rank them from most to least growth. Write the claim: 'Beans need water and light to grow. Cup A grew most because it had both.' If cup C sprouted pale and tall, explain that it is searching for light. Ask what a rabbit would eat if there were no cup A plants in the world.
2. 15 min — Art Connection: Interdependence Chain: Cut 6 paper strips. On each, your child draws one pair that depends on each other: bee and flower, squirrel and oak tree, bird and berry bush, worm and soil, cow and grass, person and apple tree. Loop them into a paper chain and hang it under the Animal Groups Poster. Say the chain aloud: 'The flower needs the bee, the bee needs the flower.'
3. 5 min — Week Reflection: Ask: 'What is one thing you depend on that depends on something else?' Keep cup A growing on the windowsill; preview next week: 'What happens to these chains when a habitat is damaged?'

Materials: bean cups, notebook, pencil, paper strips, crayons, tape or stapler