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