Gr. 2 Scientists in School

The grade 2's learned about liquids, solids and gases. They had fun playing with bubbles and mixing materials together. They learned that salt makes ice melt and also lowers the temperature of the solution. They learned about temperatures above and below zero and that when a liquid is brought below zero it will freeze, become a solid and expand.

My apologies that there is no picture... the pictures I took all have students in them, so I'm unable to post them here.

Grade 1 Scientist in School: Energy

These are windmills and you have to blow in the pocket so that it can spin and that's how energy works. We made the windmills from paper with dotted lines to cut on and first we coloured in the stuff that you could colour in. Then we cut it. Then an adult folded it and then we put something in and pushed it down so it could stay. Then we got a straw and put it through and then we blew on it and it was a windmill.

Sun is energy.

The Thank You Poem

We made posters for the thank you poem and we said it to the parents that helped out at skating, pizza lunch and in the classroom. At the volunteer tea, we said the poem and held up posters when we were saying it and had three different groups: the red group, the green group and the blue group. The blue group was the third group and the green one was the second and the red was the first. At the end we all said the last words.

THANK YOU ...

Such a simple word;
It's often underrated.
And yet, in truth,
It's always good
To feel appreciated.
So here's my chance to say it!
It's absolutely true....

Thank you, thank you, thank you,

For everything you do!

The Helping Hands

We were making hands and we wrote on them what we can do to help people and animals. Help people, love people, care for people. Help animals that are injured. Help a grandpa or grandma read. Help someone find one of their lost pets. We should give clothes away that don't fit us or that we don't use. Give money away to someone who doesn't have that much.

We made them because we went for an assembly and the three people showed us why we should lend a hand. They said that they would give everyone's teacher hands so we could write what we could do to lend a hand in the community.

You'll find the hands in the Markham Fair!

The Biggest Sunflower

We were making a sunflower and it took a lot of work, but now we're done and it only took two days and we started making it yesterday morning. The leaves were a lot of work. For the leaves, you had to get a piece of paper and fold it four times and then you had to cut out the shape of a leaf and then you had to draw veins. Leaves have veins to keep them alive. It keeps the plant living. They need them because it stores all their water and nutrients. I saw that they were using a ruler to do the stem. We used a metre stick to do the stem and for the sunflower, we used blocks to make the leaves. The blocks were triangles. The sunflower is four and a half metres tall!

Marshmallow Worlds

We are continuing to learn more about 3-D solids and have been building models of them using toothpicks and marshmallows. Students are learning about the number of vertices or corners (marshmallows) and edges (toothpicks) on each 3-D solid. They are working in groups to make "Marshmallow Worlds" including zoos, boats, cities and castles.

Ask your child what his/her group is building and what 3-D solids he/she built for this project.

Big Dig

  

 

We bought the Dinosaur Dig off a Scholastic order. We got it because keep on buying things for the class from Scholastic. We had tally marks and we had a bunch of stuff if we were going to choose anything: Sponge Bob, Scooby Doo, but the Big Dig had more tally marks.

We were looking for the bones of the dinosaur and then we took them out.

We used tools to dig the bones out and under the bone, there was the picture of the bone in the sand. We used a special kind of hammer to hammer some of the sand.

When we found some of the bones then when we were digging for bones we saw a bump and when we opened it it was different because it looked like all the bones together but we only found one. They were all separate.

There were two different parts of the dinosaur, the head and the body. First we dug the body and we found lots of pieces and after you find all the pieces you use all the pieces and make the dinosaur.

I was the one who washed all the bones off and I was starting to build it and I only got a little bit far because you need to glue gun it.

When we were making them we saw some fossils and we didn't even notice they were in there and when people were breaking the rocks, some people were breaking the fossils too.

3-D Solids

 

We have gone on a hunt around the school for real life objects that resemble the 3-D solids we are learning about: cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, prisms and pyramids. We learned that rectangular prisms are by far the easiest to find. We had to venture into the gym cupboard to find a greater variety of 3-D solids!

Students have been tracing the sides or flat surfaces of the 3-D blocks we have in the classroom. We have learned that a sphere has no flat sides and a cone has only one.

We have also been sorting the shapes. For example, let's put all of the solids with square faces in this group and all of the solids with triangular faces in this group... Are there some solids that belong in both groups?

Now look for 3-D solids at home! (Note: The "cuboid" should be called a "rectangular prism".)

Blue Spruce Reading

 

 

Blue Spruce is an annual reading program organized by the Ontario Library Association. Students from Kindergarten to Grade 2 from across the province will be reading these same books and voting on them. New books are chosen each year and they are always great picks.

So far we have read four of the ten books. Ask your child which one is his/her favourite so far and why. Then try checking out other books by that same author.

Painted Faces?!

Your child may have come home with a painted face yesterday. Today the students are going to explain what we were doing.

....

We were making Pokemon cards and we painted our face to make them look like Pokemon cards. We painted our face because we are putting our faces on the Pokemon cards. We are going to make our own Pokemon cards and today we made little costumes for our animals to be Pokemons too. Some of us are doing Yu Gi Oh cards.

Grade 2 Science Experiments

We mixed hot chocolate.

1. Everybody put in two scoops of sugar and one scoop of cocoa.
2. We got to stir it for 5 seconds.
3. We added water.
4. We mixed the water and the cocoa and the sugar together.
5. We put it into the pot of hot milk.
6. We mixed it.
7. We poured it into cups.
8. Everybody got 5 marshmallows in their cup.
9. We drank it.

We made magic mud.

1. We got the ingredients.
2. We put in water and cornstarch.
3. We stirred it.
4. We put our hands in it.
5. We had to wash our hands really well!

Written by the grade two students in Mrs. James's class.

Legoland Stories

At Legoland there was a pitch dark slide and then it turned into an orange slide and there was a jungle gym too.

When I went on the pitch dark slide it turned red and then I was screaming in the slide and then I got out.

There was this ride where you had to shoot the bad guys and there was points at the end too and I won in my group.

In the movie theatre, when they raced in the winter, snow came down onto people and when it rained, rain came down on people.

To get onto the laser slide, you had to go through this tunnel and it has a waterfall in it and all this Lego and then you have to press buttons if you want to move them, but if you press one it turns on the propellers and it spins really fast.

We were building really really tall towers and the teacher said you have to build it really strong. The girls' tower fell down because it was too skinny. Our tower was really really strong because my smacked it by accident and it never broke. We put the pieces on really tight.

We had a really big base and then we made it bigger. At the top we made it skinnier. We put a roof on top and a door at the bottom.

-Written by the grade one students in Mrs. James's class

Inquiry-Based Learning

 

If you google "inquiry-based learning" you will find a lot of very current information. It is currently a focus in many York Region schools. It involves giving students freedom to explore objects, books and environments and develop their own questions.

This week one student brought in a wooden fan for sharing. It allowed us to ask a lot of questions about how the fan works and we noticed that it works like some of the simple machines the grade two's were learning about with Scientist in Schools.

This fan reminded one student of a peacocks feathers and this lead us to a great discussion and debate about peacocks. We have recorded what students already know or think they know as well as many questions and we have begun to research our questions.

At home, you can do some more research on peacocks... or any other animal... or any other thing your child has questions about. Some of the best learning happens when students are working to answer THEIR OWN questions!

Creating a Story

 

 

Ideas for stories can come from all sorts of interesting places. One way we have been developing our ideas is through dramatic play. You can ask your child what he/she was playing in the gym. Maybe he/she was running from a dragon, fishing, helping to save wildlife or playing on a professional hockey team. Through play, students develop characters, setting and plot. Their imaginations run wild!

Following play in the gym, students made audio recordings of their stories on ipads. This was a chance to record their ideas without worrying about conventions (e.g., spelling).

Now we are working on listening to the stories and writing them on paper. This is a chance for students to focus on printing and spelling, with the ideas already in place.

Mickey Eves

As you know, today we were fortunate enough to have author and illustrator, Mickey Eves, visit our school. She gave a captivating presentation to the primary students and really motivated them to use their imaginations and (continue to be) creative story tellers.

Ask your child about the story with a girl who got bubble gum stuck in her hair.

Ask them to show you an ordinary object (e.g., a cup, a broom, a towel), and use their imagination to tell you what it could be and to make up an interesting story about it. It would be fun to write the story down for them, write it together or have them write it and include pictures. Publish your own book just like Mickey Eves!

Kids Playing in the Snow and Watching it Melt

We put snow in our sand table. We put a thermometer in to see what temperature it was. We guessed how cold the snow was. The classroom was 19 degrees. The snow was zero degrees. We played with the snow and we waited for it to melt. We were watching the snow melt. We got ideas on the Smart Board for how long it would take to melt. We don't know how long it took to melt because we were at home on the weekend.

When the snow melted it turned into water. We kept the water for a little while and now it's our water table. This morning it turned all dirty. The water is 12 degrees. 

Written by Mrs. James's Grade One and Two Students

Why don't we have lockers anymore?

The new lockers that have been installed are bigger than the old ones and so there is not room for as many. For every 5 lockers that were removed, 4 were put in. Today in math we used tallies to count how many groups of 4 lockers there are in the hall. Answers ranged from the mid-30s to the low 50's! (There are a total of 190 lockers in the school.)

Lucky for us we have a hooks and shelving in our classroom so students have a place to keep all of their things. Now that boots are being kept in the classroom, it might be a good idea to keep an extra pair of socks in the bottom of the backpack (in addition to the bag of spare clothing which is now kept in students' desks).

Stouffville Spirit!

Today we were fortunate to have 3 members of the Stouffville Spirit hockey team in our class to help out. Students had a chance to read their levelled books to them. These volunteers also helped students with their writing. It was an exciting morning and students were sad to see them go!

Optimism in January

 

Monday we were busy preparing for the Optimism assembly on Tuesday. We read a familiar book called The Blue Day Book and talked about what we can do when we're having a "blue day" to try to feel better. Some ideas were: Dance like nobody's watching! Read a book! Smile! Next we watched "Never fully dressed without a smile" on youtube which got the students really excited about optimism, the song and making their optimism posters.

On Tuesday we presented our dance (posters in hand) to the "Never fully dressed without a smile song". Students had a great time and I was VERY impressed with their positive energy.

We have also been learning about optimism from a book called The Pout Pout Fish. There's a great sung version of this book on youtube if you'd like to have a look. Students had their picture taken with their best pouty face and wrote about what makes them feel like the pout pout fish.