Husky Newsletter

This weeks Husky News

STEAM Friday

STEAM Friday is a time when we explore science, technology, engineer, arts,and math in a project,  our first STEAM project was building the tallest tower from connect blocks.  The students worked in groups first to decide how many of each shape they wanted to work with.  They could only get 30 blocks.  After a while I offered 20 more blocks and they had to again decide how many of each shape they wanted to get.  Close to the end of building I offered 20 more circle blocks.  The children found building a secure base to hold the weight of the structure difficult.  Once they had an excellent base many were able to build the tower up and add height to their structure.  In the end the tallest structure was 17 inches while the smallest was 5 inches.  Some found building to be difficult.  I would love to purchase a few LEGO kits for my children to use to help with reading directions and building a structure.  This may be my first Donors Choose project.

shopping list was approved to they are gathering their shapes

counting out their shapes with their shopping list 

early stages of building

Building their tower

Our weekly newsletter on the Blog

First Day of Second Grade

Today was our first day back at school.  We spent the day getting to know eachother and learning routines. It always amazes me how little the children are in September. By November your children will mature and grow so much. Cherish these moments since before you know it they will be bigger than you.  I am posting our cairn we built today and the math game we enjoyed playing with our friends. Now off to get a good night's sleep so I can do it all over again tomorrow. However tomorrow is special being the second day of second grade!!

Go Math game

Our class cairn

Welcome Back

As so many of my students are preparing to return to school, I have been busy these last couple days getting our room ready.  I hope you all received my letter and you are researching what a cairn is.  Here is a picture of Ni'cko on Acadia Mountain.  He was leading us from cairn to cairn so we stayed on the trail.  Hope this helps your research.
 
                                           

Wearing Purple for Epilepsy

Today we wore purple for everyone who suffers with epilepsy. Sixty-five million people world wide have epilepsy.  One in twenty-six people in the United States will develop epilepsy in their life.  A third of all people with epilepsy have uncontrolled seizures.  Please help  by donating to the NH epilepsy foundation to help support those like my nephew Seth who suffer daily from seizures.  Tomorrow we are chewing gum for epilepsy.  Half the money raised will go to the NH Epilepsy Foundation.

 Wearing purple in Mrs. Weaver's class earned all purple people a popcorn treat tomorrow.  Yum!

Wearing purple to support Seth and everyone else who suffers with epilepsy.  

Working with fourth graders on our writing

Thank you Mrs. Beaudet's class for listening to our stories.  We enjoyed reading our stories to you and finding out what you liked or thought we should change. We can't wait to hear your stories.

Alex Comes to Second Grade

We always enjoy Alex coming to our class and reading his books to us. Today he picked a fun leprechaun story, "Leprechaun on the Loose" to read to us. He is a great husky in training. Thanks Alex for visiting us and reading your book.

Royalty in Room 210

We enjoyed our study of England for the multicultural event at school. During this project we researched five monuments in England, were sorted into Royal families, made crowns, painted with tea and read books written by English authors. We loved reading Paddington and made our own Paddington Bears. We also read many of Roald Dahl's books including Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, and The Giraffe, The Pelly, and Me.  Thank you to all the families who came out last week to see our projects.

Guest Reader/Author

On Friday we had guest readers come and read to us.  We had the mayor, superintendent, a teacher, and our last guest reader is an actual author.  Johnny Beaudet came to read his first published book Sammy's Adventures.  We were so excited to hear his story about Sammy's adventures on the Iditarod trail.  We also got three of his illustrations before they were finished so that we can color them ourselves.  Thank you everyone for coming in to read to us.  Thank you Johnny for sharing your new book with us and we wish you luck with your project at school.

Happy Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day we all created our Dojo monsters for our Valentine Box.  We had fun creating our own Dojo monsters. We recycled old boxes and paper to create our works of art.  We had a wonderful day and enjoyed spending time showing our creative side.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas From Room 210

Gingerbread Houses

We enjoyed creating our gingerbread houses with graham crackers, frosting, and LOTS and LOTS of candy.  Thank you to all the parents who sent in these treats to make our houses.  Fun STEM project today.  Mrs. Dzujna and I also had fun making our own houses.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

For our fluency assignment in December we learned the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas".  We partnered with a friend to be able to read our section fluently.  We practiced with each other and then read to the teachers.  Next we were able to go around the building to find a special place and a person to read our stanza of the poem to.  After we all read our stanza Mrs. Weaver put all of the clips together to make one poem.  It was so much fun watching all of our stanza's come together.

Early Gift from Santa

      

Santa was looking for our wonderful class and stumbled upon Mr. and Mrs. Dzujna's house.  She knew Mrs. Dzujna would be sure to bring us our gifts.  Mrs. Dzujna read us the letter he left for us and then we each were able to pull out our special gift.  So glad we were all on the good list this  year.  We enjoyed spending time with our bears in class before taking them home.

Mrs. Dzujna reading our letter

Cajun Night Before Christmas

In December we listened to the story Cajun Night Before Christmas and then worked on a STEM activity of building a flat boat like the one in the story.  The children worked in groups and were given a specific amount of money to buy materials.  They completed a list for the store and bought the materials they thought they would need.  We quickly found out clay is not a good item to purchase because it made a mess when the boats went in the water.  YUCK!!  The children added weight to their boats to see who's boat could hold the most cargo for Santa.  We had a lot of fun and learned about what items floated the best. 

             

The STEM Tower

On Friday we completed a STEM activity in groups of 4 and one group of 5. We each got 40 connectors to build our towers. As engineers we had to make a plan.  Then we needed to build a base by working together.  If Mrs. Weaver caught us working together nicely she gave us more connectors.  After 15 minutes Mrs. Weaver said stop and then she measures our structures.  The highest structure was from the purple table and they had one that was 23 centimeters tall. It was lots of fun building our towers.  We hope to build it again.  Enjoy our video of our STEM activity.

Lilly Heads to Disney for Halloween

Our friend Lilly went on an adventure to Disney for Halloween.  We are excited to hear how her trip is going.

Hi Mrs. Weaver
I have been so busy doing all kinds of fun stuff with my family. We are at my grand-pa Jacks and Nana's in Leesburg Florida. We were at Disney first. I went on tower of terror at Hollywood studios and loved it. I will see you soon. Miss you
Lilly
  

                  

                      

     Lilly with her favorite characters from Frozen.          Lilly and her brother with Mini Mouse.


Mrs. Weaver,

We had fun at Disney and we went to a festival and I got my first henna tattoo with my mom.
I had so much fun!
Lilly

Cool Tattoos

I am so glad Lilly and her family were able to take this family vacation and discover Disney World. Family time is always meaningful and priceless.  Our children grow up so fast its nice to watch them grow and discover the world around them.  But a little silly time in Disney I am sure was had by the Gula Family.  Glad it was a wonderful trip and I will be excited to hear all about it when Lilly returns.