October 19-25

Last Friday in our group activity we created butterflies for our bulletin board. We learned that the butterfly has a main body part in the middle, antenna, a long tongue for slurping up nectar, and wings. We also learned that the butterflies' wings are symmetrical. Meaning the design is the same on both sides.

 

In math we are continuing with place value. We learned a place value card game to play with a partner and did an around the world with place value activity with Miss Hamlin. We have begun learning about numbers in the thousands place.

Bee's play an important part in the insect world. We now know that there are three different kinds of bee's in a colony: the queen, worker, and drone. Worker bee's and queen bee's are always female and the drones are always male. In Science we started learning about the food chain and food web.



Molly and Paige sharing bee facts









 

  

 

Social Studies we have kicked off our own election season! We are learning about the candidates, important vocabulary, the election process, and we will have our own ballots and on November 6th, we will vote on who we think should be the next President.

 

Mrs. Gouttierre's class has added more activities to do during the Word Work portion of the Daily 5 program.

Type'em: Use the computer to type your list of words.

Write a Letter: write a letter to your friend using as many spelling words as you can.

Search and Find: Find spelling words in books from our classroom.

Use Your Hands: use your hands to work with a variety of materials to spell words (magnets, word tiles, beans, cards)

Stamp it Out: Create each spelling word with stamps.



Paige doing Type'em




Russell doing Use Your Hands with letter blocks





Maeve using Magnet in Use Your Hands



Connor using letter cards in Use Your Hands

Thomas using beans in Use Your Hands



Janey using her library book to Search and Find




Nate doing Stamp it Out



Mallory using colored markers to write her words

September 21-27

Last Friday, the second graders got to show off their excellent reading skills by sharing stories with the Pre-Kindergarten students. By doing this, the second graders build confidence in their reading, practice fluency, and reading with expressing. They also had an opportunity to feel like the "big kids" and be role models for their PreK friends.

In social studies, the students continue to learn about maps, communities, and directions. Ms. Stark took the students outside to practice using a compass to tell direction and location. We learned that the compass is always facing north no matter what direction we are facing!

 

 

In science, we got to have our first experiment! In our study of whales, we learn that whales all have a layer of fat, or blubber, that protect them from the icy, cold waters of the ocean. This blubber can be up to  20 inches thick! Sort of like the really, really warm coats that we wear in the winter, but even better! 

The students wrote a hypothesis on whether they believe blubber would keep their skin warm in ice water. Mrs. Gouttierre created "blubber gloves" using Crisco shortening inside of plastic bags. First, we put our hand into the bucket of ice water for 10 seconds---it was cold!!

  

Then, we put on the "blubber glove" and put our hand back in the water. Right away we could feel the difference, we could keep our hand in for much longer and it barely felt cold at all!







 

In math, we began hidden pictures and reviewing greater than/less than. Hidden pictures use graph paper and following specific directions. If we follow the directions correctly we end up with a pretty awesome picture!

 

 

We played a greater than/less than game with a partner using dice. This is a good game to play at home with a sibling or parent.

 

Reminders for tomorrow:

ROXABOXEN: the students have decided on their groups and their buildings and are so excited for tomorrow! Thank you to all the students and parents who donated their treasures to our Roxaboxen community. There is no limit on parent volunteers, everyone is welcome! If you wish to come, be in the second grade classrooms anytime between 9-11.

PAJAMA DAY!

In honor of our Head of School for a day, tomorrow is Pajama Day! Students are welcome to come to school in their comfiest outfit, while still following St. Paul's dress code. Students are also welcome to wear slippers, we just require a change of shoes for P.E. and recess.

 Last Friday, we had a special visit from oceanographer Dr. David Gallo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ! He came to speak to 1-5th graders about his work. He showed amazing pictures and videos of the sea life that live deep in our oceans and the amazing things that they can do. Dr. Gallo has personally done many deep sea expeditions to visit these creatures and has even seen the RMS Titanic!

We are continuing our own exploration of whales this week. We studied the different parts of a whale's body (dorsal fin, flukes, throat pleats, flipper, eyes, and blowhole) and got to see what it's skeleton looks like.

Ms. Stark's class got to use the iPads in Daily 5 to search and research facts from Kids Biology on whales.

Social Studies this week focused on rules and laws in our community and how to be good citizens by following those.

It is encourage for your child to be looking for current events that interest them outside of school. They can look in newspapers, magazines, or on the Internet. They can bring in an article to share with the class every Wednesday.
















Owen and Russell working together



 

In Science, the students went on a mammal scavenger hunt. They worked in pairs to find the mammals around the room and answer questions about that animals specific fact. 



Lena finding mammal facts!

American Indian Exhibit

Our field trip to the Nelson-Atkins American Indian Exhibit was fantastic. The day was beautiful- not too hot, and not too cold. After walking to the museum, we had a picnic on the lawn.

After picnic activities included some "wax museum", "doctor doctor", soccer, and relays down the terraces.


Thanks to all of the wonderful parent support, the information treasure hunt was fabulous. You can see in all of the pictures, the students were really involved in discovery.











A BIG "thanks" to all that made this such a wonderful experience!