Looking at the Past and Into Our Future

We began our study of Native American Indians by looking at artifacts of Native American culture.  As your children looked at each artifact they were asked to determine what the object was, what was it made of and what was it used for. There was some lively discussion about how an object could have been used.

Careful observations were made by all!

 

Hour of Code

During Computer Science Week Mrs. Martino introduced us to some computer programming games.  We explored Daisy the Dino and Kodable.  With both of these games we had to write a program to enable the character to negotiate their way through a set of obstacles.  

Pumpkin Pies and Seed Pots

We made pumpkin pies from the pumpkins we grew in our garden.  Four lucky families won a pie at Tuesday Harvest Lunch. This is a great way for our students to learn about the importance of Community Service.

Measuring sugars...

Adding pumpkin pie spices...

Following the recipe and carefully cracking eggs!

             Seed Pots

              We made these pot with Mrs. Bando in art class following the tradition of Acoma Pueblo potters from New Mexico. This week we added seeds from our Three Sister's Garden to keep them safe to be planted next spring.

Please come and see our pots on display in the hallway by our classroom.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

A Pit Firing of Clay Seed Pots

To prepare for our outdoor pit firing of seed pots, we had to clean out the Three Sister's garden.  While we were at it, we cleaned out the other gardens.  We decide to keep the sunflowers for the birds to feed on all winter!

             

 A Pit Firing 

Last Friday started out chilly, but with the physical labor of digging a pit and collecting wood, we soon warmed up! 

We bury our pots in the sawdust.

Then start the fire with newspaper and wood.  

A BIG THANK YOU to Mrs. Bando who helps us with this project each year!

Planting Tulip Bulbs

        As we are putting our summer gardens to bed, we are now planting tulip bulbs. We are participating in this project as part of Journey North:Citizen Scientists Studying Plants, Climates, and the Seasons. In this international science experiment, students in schoolyards across the northern hemisphere plant tulip bulbs in their Journey North Test Gardens each fall. When the plants emerge and bloom, children announce springtime in their part of the world. You can follow our journey on the Journey North link on this blog.  

First we examined bulbs as we wondered what's stored inside.

Is a bulb a seed? How is it different from our pumpkin, bean and corn seeds?

Then, using an arm balance we weighed our bulbs.
They are heavier than our Three Sister's garden seeds.

Why do we plant bulbs in the fall?

We use a grid system to keep track of where we planted each bulb so we can identify our tulip in the spring.

Finally we added water.  We are wondering, when will our tulips emerge and bloom?

Hood Museum: Outdoor Sculpture Tour

This sculpture had interesting lines, shapes and spaces to explore.  

       Seeing a squirrel nearby had us wondering if this
could be a good house for her.

Striking a pose on this sculpture.

X-Delta was the definitely our favorite sculpture as we made it move!

Showing off our sculpture creations at Dartmouth College.

A big thank you to all the parents and community members who have volunteered to chaperone  this year. We wouldn't be able to make these trips without your support!

All School Hike!

We had lots of fun on the hike last Friday.
 Many thanks to all the chaperones who joined us.

When we returned to school we had time to cut
 and seed our pumpkins for future pie making.

Second Grade Gardeners

                   The second grade has enjoyed a great fall gardening season. 
                      We were all a little sad to see the frost this morning.

Using Chromebooks and Hatching Butterflies

Your second graders were very excited to use chrome books for the first time!  Mrs. Martino and her capable helper is showing us how to log into the Rivendell web site to find my blog page.  From there we found the links to math games on the upper right corner. We played Hidden Pictures Addition to practice math facts.

We were lucky to have America Reads students that morning to help us with the log in procedures.

At the beginning of the week we were surprised to see a Monarch butterfly had hatched. We put it outside on one of our corn stalks as it dried it's wings and later found it feeding on a Black Eyed Susan, one of our plants in a new Pollinators garden.  We now have a Black Swallowtail caterpillar making its chrysalis on our Science Table.  It's been fun to see kids adding things from nature they've found at home. I ask that living things not be taken from their homes outdoors (exception is the caterpillars that we found in our garden.)  Also no smelly things!  Thanks

Tunbridge Fair

Last week we dug up a part of our garden to display at the fair.

We were very excited to see a blue ribbon as our prize!

Other activities we enjoyed were going in the cattle barns...

and we DID go to school!

          A big Thank You to all the chaperones who helped us this year!

A Busy Week Behind Us and a Busy One Ahead!

We will be busy preparing for the Tunbridge Fair as we prepare our exhibit of our "Three Sister's Garden." In class we've been examining plant parts and how each of the three plants have special features that help each other grow.

In second grade we do a lot of partner work.  We share our Weekend News stories, enjoy reading with buddies and play math games together.  In math we played Tens Go Fish to review combinations of ten and worked with coins to find the value of coin combinations.  These activities are great to do at home to practice math facts and counting money.

Please return your child's Tunbridge Fair permission slip asap so we know how many chaperones we can count on.  Thank you!