Arlington Heights Historical Museum Field Trip!

We had an amazing morning at the Arlington Heights Historical Museum! The children learned about traveling west in a covered wagon, and then practiced packing a covered wagon with necessities from long ago including seeds, lanterns, blankets, washboards, dishes, candleholders, and clothing! They visited a one room log cabin where they were able to see how an early pioneer family cooked, ate, and slept in such a tight space! They attended "class" in a one-room school where they learned that children of all ages learned in the same classroom, often by recitation! Finally, we toured the home of one of our earliest founding families- Mr. F.W. Muller. There are so many fascinating artifacts in all areas of this home! These artifacts include a large metal safe with Mr. Muller's name on it, an old-fashioned "view finder," engraved napkin rings for each member of the family, an apple peeler and cherry pitter, and one of the sewing machines produced by Charles Sigwalt's sewing machine factory! The children had fun playing with old-fashioned wooden toys, tossing corn cobs into a barrel, and attempting some chores including ringing the triangle-bell, collecting sticks, and hitting the dust out of rugs. Thank you to Mr. Delea, Mrs. Salemi, Ms. Lee, Mrs. Strimling, and Mrs. Ninness for joining us on our trip. It was a perfect day!

Arlington Heights Landmark Project

As a part of our Arlington Heights unit, the children are each studying a particular landmark (past or present) of interest in our town. They will be recording a few notable facts to go along with a drawing they've created that corresponds with their landmark. An added challenge to the project was to take a present day photograph at the actual site of the landmark! Thank you to those of you who have emailed those photographs to me, they are amazing! Thank you for helping us bring our learning to life. If you aren't quite sure where your landmark might have been, check out this virtual map from the Arlington Heights Historical Museum!

Here are a few pictures we've received so far:

Ella is in front of the Allen home.

Anya is in front of Village Hall.

                                                         Joe is in front of James Dunton's Home.

                                           Shelby is in front of the First Presbyterian Church.

                                                       Cole is in front of Recreation Park.

Technology Update!

Our class is now the proud owner of our very own iPad! We are so excited to have access to this valuable resource every day! If you are following our twitter account (@MissOSullivan2) you might have noticed that Ben was making updates throughout the week about what the kids in our class were up to, using the iPad (and my phone)!

Also, the 2nd grade is about to receive the building's grade level set of Ipads! We expect them to arrive next week. Feel free to check in with the children's individual blogs later next week! I am going to be encouraging them to blog about their learning using this communicative tool, now that they will have their own personal access to an iPad for the next month! There is a "Guest" sign in at the bottom of the list of student names if you would like to log in and comment on their thoughts- just remember to sign your name since it is a general account. The password is the same as your child's password.

Finally, thank you for encouraging your children to utilize their xtramath.org accounts from home to practice their math facts! I have seen a jump in the usage of their accounts (I can see who is logging in!) and a jump in scores, too! Hooray!

Junior Achievement: Postponed

Unfortunately, Ms. Younan had to cancel our JA lesson on Friday! We will move the donut-making  lesson about unit vs. assembly production to this coming Friday.

New Classroom Friends!

As we near the end of our Arlington Heights History unit, we begin to look ahead to our Life Cycles unit! Look what arrived on Wednesday! We have 5 caterpillars that will soon become Painted Lady Butterflies. The kids have been eager to rush in to the classroom each morning since they arrived to look for any changes!

 In just 2 days, look at how much they have grown! We also noticed that there is a protective layer forming around the caterpillars as they begin to affix themselves to the side of the cup.

                                                                       Stay tuned!

Gianna is a STAR!

Gianna is a star 2nd grader!

 She read our class a hilarious book that she checked out of the library last week! It was a book full of shortened fairy tales that parents might choose to read to their kids so they will go to sleep faster, called "Once Upon a Time, The End." We got such a kick out these condensed stories!

Gianna performed her experiment for the kids! She showed us how different substances don't mix, and actually move away from each other!

Here is a picture of Gianna, her mom and dad, and her grandma! Thank you for visiting our class!

Junior Achievement

Our Junior Achievement lessons began today! Colleen Younan is our Junior Achievement representative, and she took some time out of her day today to meet the class and talk to us about jobs and services in the community! She will be teaching the children about thoughtful decision making, unit vs. assembly line production, and she will show the children how money flows through the community. We are so eager to learn with her throughout her 5 lesson series!

2nd Graders Study the History of Arlington Heights!

The children are hard at work at their brand new social studies unit: The history of Arlington Heights!

We started off the unit thinking about our needs vs. our wants. The children were quick to realize the difference between the two! We talked about income and making sure to spend our money on the things we have to have to survive first: food, clothing and shelter. THEN we can prioritize the things that we want. We also talked about how/why it is important to save money in case of emergencies!

Then we started learning about the land in our area back in the early 1800's. The children discovered that the Potowatomi Indians were the first people to inhabit our area, until the settlers starting rolling in on their covered wagons! We read and learned about what a long, difficult journey it must have been to spend several long months traveling along a bumpy trail, bringing only the bare necessities along. The children "packed" their own covered wagons and wrote about the journey!

We are now learning about the first settlers who arrived in our area, which in the 1830's was first known as West Wheeling. The children have discovered the Miner, Kennicott, and Dunton families who made powerful early impressions on our town!  We are looking forward to our field trip next Friday to the Arlington Heights Historical Museum to deepen our learning even further!

A Visit from an AUTHOR!

 Author Jennifer Ward visited the primary students on Tuesday afternoon! She inspired us to begin writing just... for FUN!

Jennifer read us one of the stories she wrote, called "There Was An Old Pirate Who Swallowed a Fish." She helped us come up with a topic to build our very own stories from... "There Was a Dolphin who Swallowed a School!"  It was a wonderful experience! 

Our Super Star... Shelby!

It was Shelby's week to shine at school! 

She read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" to the class! Shelby loves Dr. Seuss- she dressed up with a friend as Thing 1 and Thing 2 for Halloween!

A special treat, Shelby's dad came in to visit our class on Friday, bringing along Shelby's grandparents who were visiting from Florida! What a wonderful surprise!

Shelby showed us how refraction works during her science experiment! She put a straw into a plastic cup of water and we noticed that the straw appeared to bend in the glass. The light travels at different speeds through air and water, which is why the straw looks that way. We poured some oil in the water to see the straw bend twice! The kids were very eager to go home and test out refraction on their own with all kinds of liquids in their houses! Shelby had a wonderful star week at school. How fortunate we are to have such a caring, helpful, eager, sunshiny, and bright girl in our class!

Math Update

As we move through Unit 10, we are working on money amounts, use of decimals, and place value. The children are practicing estimating money amounts that are written in decimal notation. In our current unit we have identified several different names for a dollar, a dime and a penny- including words, fractions, coins, and using the decimal point.  The children are increasing their comfort level with the calculator as they enter in different dollar and cent amounts, and practice adding multiple amounts together. The children viewed a “Then and Now,” poster and used it to think about why prices have changed over time, and to also find the actual difference between prices.  We were learned to add multiple sets of these items by using the multiplication symbol. We ended the week making change by counting up to $1.00, $5.00, and $10.00. We used the calculator to check our work!

Up next in Writing... Fairy Tales!

The children and I have been investigating common components of fairy tales. We have had so much fun lately reading BUNCHES of fairy tales and fractured fairy tales together in class for our research! :) We noticed that often, fairy tales have: a hero or heroine, a magical element, a prince/princess or queen, a setting of a faraway time or place, a good/bad guy, the numbers 3 or 7, a beginning of "Once upon a time," and most of all, a happy ending. The children and are currently planning their own fractured fairy tale based on the story, "Little Red Riding Hood." They were challenged to change the setting of the story as well as the main characters in order to make a new and exciting version of this well known story. The children are really getting their creative juices flowing! It will be fun to see how their fairy tales turn out!