The Great Outdoors

What a beautiful morning for a walk to the Little Lake Discovery Center.  Hidden behind the trees and a dusty parking lot is an area to explore and see nature, right here in our city!  We tiptoed through the trees, looking for evidence of animals, hoping not to scare the living ones away. 

We saw: plants, spiders, beetles, bird nests, squirrel nests, a hornet's nest, where a deer was bedded down for the night, cocoons, birds, butterflies, a tower, cattails, frost, tall trees & a boardwalk!

Little Lake Discovery Center Trail

Top of the Tower!

Hornets nest above!

There was frost on the boardwalk and the cattails were beautiful.  Students noticed trails through the reeds. Had an animal been walking there?

We are studying maps!  Students were excited to find one of the area to learn more about what they were seeing.



Last Week of September

Tuesday-      Day 1

Wednesday- Day 2

Thursday-    Day 3
Walk to Little Storm Lake Discover Center  with 2D

Friday-         Day4
Katie van der Linden-live animals!

Little Storm Lake Discovery Center, just across the street from the Elementary School.  Did you know this hidden gem was just behind the trees?  Photo courtesy of Presten Meineke

 

Tornado Fans Up in the Stands!

Call Me Maybe!

Varsity Tornado Cheer & Football Players!

Quiet boys.





Days ahead...

Remember that Friday is an early dismissal at 12:25.  There is also no school on Monday.  Kids, come back ready to tweet on Tuesday!

Orange!

Team day!

Homecoming Week!!!!

Happy Hat Day!

Monday-Hat day

Tuesday-Team day

Wednesday-Wear orange

Thursday-Funny Feet

Friday-Green & White Day!!!

I was born in a small town....

Kids worked on Thursday and Friday to build their own small communities.  They made decisions like:

• How many people live in my community?
• What kind of transportation do they use?
• What businesses would I like to have in my small town?

Writing with Words We Know

Students have been getting to know their shaken PWIM words in the last few weeks.  We have sorted them, looking for different word patterns.  We found short & long vowels and r controlled vowels.  Wednesday, students read their words again and decided which they were comfortable using in their writing .  They used those words to write quality 2nd grade sentences.  They focused on using the word correctly, having a capital letter to start the sentence, and a punctuation mark to end the sentence.

Book Orders

 

3 book orders were sent home with students today.  Please make checks out to Scholastic.  When parents order, the classroom benefits!  We bank points that are spent on free books for our classroom.

To fill out:  Mark the number of copies of the book you want in the QTY  column, then fill out the total price for those books.  Add up your grand total at the bottom.  Make sure your child's name is at the top of that order.  Send it to school in a sealed envelope or baggie.

Brainstorming and more....

Today we learned on Loop Scoops, that each year 4 billion juice boxes are used.  It takes 300 years for them to decompose. We figured out that this generation of students has contributed 28 billion juice boxes to the landfills so far. 

Solution?  Drink juice out of a glass!

Brainstorming different things we can recycle! ~Stefany



Nickolas is cleaning up the lake!

Oscar is finding recyclables in the ocean.  We learned about the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.  This was really disturbing to 2nd graders.  Beautiful marine animals suffering because of our carelessness.

Marine Debris-Pacific Garbage Patch

Hunter is recycling a water bottle!

Waste Reduction

In June, Mrs. Loving and I took a fantastic class at the Prairie Heritage Center near Petersen, IA.  B.V. County Solid Waste supported Buena Vista County teachers by paying for our class, the UNI credit, and all of our materials.  We recieved many great books for our classroom as well as wonderful ideas to educate children about waste in our world.  The following link will take you to a Pilot Tribune article about the class.

http://www.stormlakepilottribune.com/story/1839211.html

Mrs. Loving and I spent the last week team teaching.  We discussed many aspects of waste reduction, recycling, & reusing materials we already have.  Students learned that our main message was that we don't need more stuff to be happy.  Flat screens, Playstations, cool cars...they are just STUFF!

Students journaled about the things that bring them

true happiness:

family, a special pet, hugs, time with special people.

Project:

Snip the bottom of the tshirt...then tie it off like a baby blanket!

Josie & Benny

Ximena, Tammy, Raquel, Dol, Hailey, Mia, Stefany, Josie, Tracy 

Benny, Oscar, Nickolas, Joseph, Alexis, Hunter, Skyler

Students brought in tshirts and jeans to repurpose.  Many of them had holes and were ready to be given away for hand-me-downs or sent to Goodwill.  Mrs. Loving had students make a few quick cuts to their tshirt and it became a brand new bag!  I had students turn jeans into jean-shorts or capris and then decorate them.  There were many smiles admiring each other's new clothing.  Everyone was inspired to make more tshirt bags!



Hunter's sweet designs.

 

Front row: Ashley, Ximena, Hailey, Stefany, Josie
Middle row: Adrian, Benny Tammy, Skyler, Raquel, Mia, Tracy
Back row: Bryan, Jerson, Hunter, Joshua, Oscar, Dol, Nickolas, Justin

Showing off our Pants & Bags!