Santa Claus is Coming to Town!

This week we made these adorable Santa glyphs from the Glyph Girls.  We have been discussing measurement and data this month and found these were a really fun way to look at and discuss data.  They also make our school look super festive!  We thought Santa needed some reindeer as well and made them too. Pictures coming soon!

Padlet

Created with Padlet

Tomorrow I will be introducing second grader's to the website Padlet, formally known as Wallwisher. Richard Byrne, author of the website Free Technology for Teachers, has a great tutorial on how to use this website.  His post offers excellent suggestions for using Padlet in the elementary classroom.  You can take a look at it by clicking here.

As you can see, Padlet allows you to embed your wall on your classroom blog which I think is very handy for using with little ones.  One less URL to try to copy down. Love it!  You can also change the URL from the given number code to one you think your kiddos would be able to remember more easily if you don't have a classroom blog that your students access regularly.

We will be using this wall, our first experience, as our exit ticket at the end of the day.  I love using websites and apps like this (yes, there is a free Padlet App) because they encourage students to pay close attention to what they write, students get immediate feedback from their peers, everyone shares an idea and a whole lot of reading goes on using this format. Visit us tomorrow afternoon and read about all the new learning that took place.

Trees & New Apps

This week we learned all about the inside of trees and why trees leaves change colors.  We also were introduced to some really fun new iPad apps: Educreations, Carve a Pumpkin and Zombie Math!

Welcome to the World of Trees!

On Wednesday, October 16th, we went for a walk at our school to look for trees. We wanted to study and observe different trees.  We found conifers and deciduous trees.  Deciduous trees have leaves that change color in the Fall and will eventually fall from the tree.  Conifers have needles that always stay green. They are also known as evergreens.

These students are measuring the trunk of their White Birch tree.
It's circumference was 39 inches.

These three students were writing and drawing their observations about their tree.

Our classmate was checking to see if his arms could fit around the trunk of his tree.

This student is also checking to see if her arms could fit around her tree.
She loves hugging trees!

These arborists are measuring their tree to see how large the trunk is.

This arborist is recording her data in her tree journal.

Look at What we are Learning About

Fairy Houses

Last Wednesday we walked down to the creek near the Ascension School to look for fairy houses. We found five different kinds of fairy houses.  We found lumber fairies, farmer fairies, fishing fairies, hunting fairies and rock fairies. All the fairies worked together to share their resources.  They worked together and depended on each other to make sure all the fairies had the resources they needed.

This is the Fishing Fairies house.

This is the Rock Fairies house.

Here is the Lumber Fairies house.

The Hunting Fairies lived here.

A closer look at the Hunting Fairies house.

Farmer Fairies garden.  They had a scarecrow to scare away slugs!

A complete view of the Farmer Fairies Farm.

All of us gathered around Mr. Macke to tell him what we thought was the coolest fairy house.

These were our tour guides.  They were from the Natural Resource class.

Skunks, Birthdays and Research!