Monday's Message! By Drew

Today was a fun day. We had PE and Music class this morning. In PE we played Capture the Football.  In Music we played the drums. We made our own spelling lists because this is a review week in Treasures.  We learned the cursive capital letter F.  We worked on our graphic organizers for our "Save the Earth" essays. We are writing 3 paragraphs about reducing, reusing and recycling, with a catchy opening and a good closing sentence too. We read a little about endangered animals, too! We reviewed and took our unit test before we start our Rock and Mineral unit tomorrow.  In math we talked about the area of different shapes.  We traced our hand and our foot on centimeter grid paper and then counted how many square centimeters they were.  We also took a mad minute that was mixed addition and subtraction facts!

Have a good evening!
Drew

Our Star Student!

Not only was Amelia our star this week, but today was also her birthday! Her mom, dad, and her younger brother Andrew all came in for a visit this afternoon. Amelia and her dad did an experiment that showed us how they could transfer a liquid from one bowl to another using air pressure!  She then read us a cute story about Froggy's visit to Hawaii. Great job, Amelia! Happy Birthday!

Save the Earth!

During our unit on Saving the Earth, the children were exposed to a variety of concepts, including: renewable/nonrenewable resources, conservation, as well as the three R's- reduce, reuse, recycle. We had a few interesting hands-on learning experiences to help deepen our understanding of these concepts including our fishing activity and a simulated oil spill. Today the children put one of the 3 R's into action (Reuse!) as they turned their old milk jugs into a brand new bird feeder. Not only did we find a new use for an old item, but we made less garbage in the process! We love the Earth! :)

Junior Achievement- What are taxes?

During our Junior Achievement lesson this week, the kids learned how money flows through the community. They learned that it takes money to make money! They also watched as some of their hard earned money was collected by the tax collectors to pay for the services found in a community, including the police and firemen, post office workers, and even the teachers!

Wednesday's Whereabouts by Danny

We had a rainy day at school today.  This morning we had a special visit from our teacher/actor, Ms. Gladu, from the Metropolis!  During our lesson today, we learned about emotions. She brought a jar full of brightly colored feathers. We attached an emotion to each one, and then showed with our body how that might look.  (example emotions: happy, sad, angry, and embarrassed.) We then talked about how exciting stories have conflicts and resolutions.  We thought about our interview of Mrs. Jojo, and we remembered the stories that she told us that we could talk about conflict/resolution! We quickly thought of 2. One was of Mrs. Jojo and her sister making mudballs (they got in trouble!) and the other was of Mrs. JoJo and her friend Diane swinging on the swings into outer space.  We had fun acting out these stories using our imaginations.  It was a fun lesson!

In art class today we had a sub, and had fun during "Doodle Day!" We had the chance to draw freely in a book.

In math we practiced adding money amounts using a decimal point with a calculator. We played Miss O'Sullivan in a game where we rolled the dice for pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollars. We added up the total amounts and Miss O'Sullivan won. :(  We also practiced buying items at the store. We estimated their amounts and then we added the actual amounts too.  (William bought ketchup and bananas. We wondered what he was making!)

Have a nice evening!
Danny

Tuesday's Tidbit by Danny

This morning we wrote about our oil spill activity from the other day. During that lesson, we all had a bowl of water. We poured vegetable oil in it to represent an oil spill (similar to the spill in the Gulf.) Then we put some cinnamon in it to represent the sludge. Last we dropped some marshmallows in the water to represent the animals that live in the ocean. We blew them around with a straw. They were completely covered in the sludge and oil. Then we tried to get the oil out of the water with a spoon. It was very difficult! It was sticking to the top of the water. We tried and tried but couldn't get it all out.  We learned that oil spills are unfortunate, and we have to watch out for all of the animals around us because once that happens it doesn't just affect them, it affects us too! Fish are a part of our food chain and if they get sick, we will get sick too. The animals can't speak for themselves so we have to do it for them!

In our Treasures book we read a nonfiction expository text about the moon. We learned that the first two people to land on the moon were Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin.  Did you know that the moon is made of rock? There is air, water, or life on the moon. It is completely silent! The footprints that were made will never get washed away because there is no movement or life or water or air that could possibly change it.  We watched a clip of the Space shuttle Apollo 11 blasting into outer space in 1969.

We had library this afternoon. We learned that there is an author coming to visit the 2nd graders at Dryden. She has written books about Toads and we are bringing home some information about that today!

In math we talked about prices from 1897 and compared them with prices from today. We noticed prices have changed a lot- they have gone up! Money has grown has less valuable over time, there seems to be more of it around these days! We practiced entering money amounts into the calculator. We also practiced in our math journals. It is important to always remember to line up the decimal points when you are adding or subtracting money.

Book order forms are coming home today, too! They are due on Friday.

See you tomorrow!
Danny

Unit vs. Assembly Production

We had another visitor this week! Ms. Younan, our Junior Achievement representative, popped in this afternoon to teach us about Unit vs. Assembly Production. In order to experience the difference, the children worked in two separate teams to make paper donuts! One team worked using Unit Assembly (one person made the entire donut) while the other team worked as a team (each took steps to prepare the donut. One mixed, one shaped, one frosted.) We found that the best quality came from Unit Assembly, while the most donuts came as a result of the Assembly production! (Assembly had the most defective donuts, however!) The children really enjoyed this lesson!

Our writing lesson- with help from the Metropolis!

Mrs. Gladu from the Metropolis came to visit the class on Wednesday! She looked at the wonderful quilt we made about Mrs. Kenney, and we highlighted the most important stories we want to include in our upcoming performance. Ms. Gladu asked the children to think of ways, other than props/costumes, that she can get us to envision her as Mrs. Kenney. The kids came up with great answers! Voice and body were two big ways. We thought about how Mrs. Kenney walks and holds herself, and we practiced moving around the room in that way. (Fortunately, Mrs. Kenney popped in! We were able to take a look first hand! :)

Tuesday's Tale by Kayleigh

Today we started the day with our DOL and DOG practice. We also worked on our individual quilt squares that each tell about a piece of Mrs. Kenney's life for our biography!

We read a story called The Ugly Vegetables. It was about a little girl and her mom who were planting a garden in their yard. They grew Chinese vegetables. Nearby, their neighbors were also planting their gardens. The little girl noticed that their gardens were different! Their gardens were full of beautiful flowers, while her own garden was full of boring old green leaves. In the end, the neighbor made a trade of delicious vegetable soup for those beautiful flowers. Our vocabulary words were: blooming, prickly, muscles, aroma, scent, and trade.

We did a fishing activity today too! With our small groups we took spoons and fished rainbow goldfish out of a pretend "ocean" paper plate for 30 seconds. The red fish represented sharks, the dark orange fish represented the red fish, the orange fish represented the clownfish, and the green fish represented the seaweed. After 30 seconds was over, we stopped fishing and Miss O'Sullivan helped us repopulate our oceans. If there were still 2 left of the same color, we would get another fish. One of our groups over-fished in the first round and NONE of their fish could be repopulated! After one or two rounds, the kids started to be more careful of what fish they took, so their oceans didn't run out of fish.

We learned that we can't too much of a natural resource, or it will run out.

We finished our natural resource posters in the LMC.

We had high school students from district 214 come and visit our class today! They want to be teachers!

Have a great dolphin evening!

Its Friday! By Owen W.

We reviewed our units of capacity this morning! We worked on our cups, pints, quarts, and our gallons! We reviewed our DOL and took our quiz. We reviewed for our spelling test by writing our spelling words in cursive, and then playing Sparkle! We took our Grammar review, too. During writing we opened up our journals and made a rough draft of our quilt square. We wrote down the question we asked Mrs. Jo Jo, and then the answer. We made sure to use quotation marks. After lunch we had a special visitor. Her name was Ms. Younan and she is our Junior Achievement volunteer. Today we got to know her. She works at Motorola! We also talked about the community and the people who work in a community. Next week, we are going to make donuts! (Paper ones :) We can't wait! In math we used a pan balance and a spring scale to measure the weight of different objects. We weighed a dry erase marker, an eraser, a pencil, and a bell.

Have a great weekend!

Owen W.

A Fun Day by Owen W.

Today was a great day! We did our DOL, we practiced finding the area on a bunch of different shapes, we worked on our possessive pronouns, and we read a Time for Kids news magazine (it was about an astronaut by the name of John Glenn) all this morning! We also had PE and Music class!

This afternoon we listened to a bunch of stories. One of them was called "Beware for the Bears!" It showed how the three bears got revenge on Goldilocks after she broke into their house. They thought it was Goldilocks house, but it turned out to be the house of the Big, BAD Wolf! It was so funny! They dumped cereal on the floor, and put shaving cream around the bathroom and they broke the couch!

During math we talked about capacity! Miss O'Sullivan told us a story about a beautiful island called Galapagos (Gallon). There lived 4 beautiful queens (quarts). Each queen (quart) had 2 princes (pints) that wanted to marry her. In order to gain the attention of the queens (quarts), each prince (pint) brought 2 of their fluffiest canaries (cups) in order to impress the queen. This story taught us that there are 4 QUARTS in a GALLON. There are 2 PINTS in one QUART and 8 PINTS in a GALLON. There are also 2 CUPS in a PINT, and 16 CUPS in a GALLON. If we can draw the picture of the Galapagos Islands, it will really help us to remember!

Have a good night!

Owen W.

Something different happened today! By: Owen W.

Today was an exciting day at school. Mrs. JoJo came in to our class this morning for us to interview her. We had already written our questions for her about her: birth, childhood, education, career, family, achievements, and interesting facts. A teacher/actor from the Metropolis named Mrs. Gladu was also here. She was taking notes during our interview. When we are done writing our biography, the Metropolis actors will act out our biography!

After lunch we went to art class. There were visitors from the Golden Apple Committee that were checking out Mrs. Fuglestad's lesson! We worked on our Character Super Heroes.

During the last part of the day we went into the gym for a Science Presentation. It was full of science experiments. We watched the scientist fill a balloon with liquid nitrogen until it POPPED! We also watched him put water in a glass and spin it upside down over two students!

We also talked about natural resources and ways to keep our earth safe during science. We can keep our earth safe by recycling, driving our cars less and walking more, and turning off the lights when we aren't using them.

More tomorrow!

Owen W.

A Fun Day at School! By Miss O'Sullivan

Our day on Thursday was full of fun moments. It started off with Mr. Robinson popping in to say happy birthday to Charlie. Not only did he say happy birthday, but he also jumped up on a chair to sing a short, sweet birthday song! We played a *super* lightning round of Spelling Sparkle. At the end of each word a classmate says "Sparkle!" In this game, not one- not two- but THREE students were sparkled out! It was a fun and quick way to review before our test. The children took a Weekly Assessment in Treasures, as well as a Grammar and a DOL review. We spent a lot of time this week choosing between the pronouns me/I, and we/us. (We practiced covering up the other subject in the sentence if there was more than one to help us choose between me/I). We worked this week to review our subtraction facts, and we also discussed perimeter and area. The children brought home all of their Australia materials today, including their passports, suitcases, and final assessments. They did and AMAZING job during our Australia unit! I was blown away by their deep understanding of a country/continent that is so far away from us. Their animal projects were full of detail and the children took such ownership of their learning! We enjoyed learning from each other very much through these projects! I especially liked to see how comfortable each and everyone was with speaking in front of their classmates! What a bunch of naturals! :) Thank you for all of your support and assistance with this home project, it is an experience the kids will remember!

In the children's red folders you will find TWO permission slips for upcoming field trips. The first one is for the Brookfield Zoo on May 4. There is not a fee to enter the zoo, but we will have to pay a fee for the bus.

The 2nd permission slip is for a very unique learning opportunity! We have just begun our writing unit on Biographies. In order to enhance our learning of this genre, each 2nd grade class has selected a Dryden staff member randomly to learn about in detail. Our class selected Mrs. Kenney from the library! With the help of a teacher/actor from the Metropolis Theater in downtown Arlington Heights, we are going to interview Mrs. Kenney and then write a collaborative biography about her life! When our biography is complete, our class will visit the Metropolis Theater to watch the biography that each 2nd grade class has written come to life on the stage. We are very excited to be able to take part in such an exciting project!

Please return those permission slips when you get a chance!

Enjoy the extended weekend, everyone!

:) Miss O'Sullivan

Our Day at School! by Will

Today we had art class. We got to come up with a Super Hero name for the 4 pillars of character. We read Super Fudge. In the story it was Halloween and Fudge and Peter went Trick-or treating at Mrs. Mulder's house. They ate worm cookies! In math we were trying to find the shortest distance from Seattle to Albuqurque New Mexico! We added a whole bunch of different ways to find the shortest one. The shortest distance we found was 1,823 miles. We read a story this week called "Pushing Up the Sky." It was a play about a group of Native Americans who lived in the state of Washington. In the story, the sky was too close to the earth, so they each tried to push it up with sticks. That didn't work because they were pushing randomly! It only worked when they worked together and pushed at the exact same time.

We've learned three capital cursive letters, C, E and O! The kids are getting excited to be able to write their names!

Have a good night!

Will