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Today in library, second graders discovered the biggest Twit-Trick of all time…The Upside-Down-Room-Shrinks Extravaganza! In the conclusion of Roald Dahl’s novel about a husband and wife who constantly try to outdo each other with outrageous and gruesome trickery, the Twits are finally outwitted (or out-twitted?)

by the monkeys and birds they have bullied for years. Students synthesized the details of the story by playing a k00sh-ball game in which they tried to recall and name all of the Twit-tricks in the book. Next week, we hope to follow up with an art project to conclude our study of the The Twits. Lastly, second graders selected books and checked out with the help of our Mystery Librarian, Noha Carrington. Thanks, Noha for helping us make each minute of library time well-spent! Books are due on October 15.

We’ve been very busy the last two weeks. Among our many activities:

We have successfully hatched and released eight Monarch butterflies! With cries of, “Buen viaje! Buen viaje! Have a good trip!,” we set the last one free this afternoon to begin its journey to Mexico. Our walls are decorated with butterfly life cycle posters that each child made, as well as the children’s writings on our trip to Magic Wings. And the trip itself was wonderful – we saw over 3000 butterflies, representing 40-60 different species. A special thank you to our four chaperones, Amanda Dotson, Alex Ciejek, Becky Carmel, and Deb Jaferian – it was great that you could come with us!

Each child has now completed a “Hope and Dream” for school. They’ve illustrated these and shared them with one another. We’ve begun to generate a list of rules so that everyone’s hope and dream can come true. Today these many rules got restated in a more positive way (for example, “No pushing” became “Use gentle hands.” Next week we’ll consolidate these 20+ rules into two or three broad ones. Stay tuned!

We saw a wonderful assembly today – a slide show about Antarctica presented by Sally Eagle and Dan Mead. Sally and Dan, both photographers, traveled to Antarctica last year, and had wonderful stories and slides to share with us. Especially impressive were photos of elephant seals. Did you know that they weigh 8000 pounds??

We continue to learn many poems. Today we began The Eagle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This particular poem often becomes a class favorite – the languge is rich and the children really understand the sense of drama in the poem. Hopefully you’ll start hearing it at home in the next few weeks!

It was great to see so many of you last night at Back-to-School Night. If you have any questions about anything I covered (or didn’t cover!) or questions about the handouts, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m always available to help!

A couple of housekeeping notes:
Gym days are Tuesday and Thursdays. Children should wear or bring sneakers on those days.
Please remember to send spoons or forks with your child’s lunch, if any foods require them. We do have plastic ware here at school, but only in limited supply.
Book order deadline has been extended to Monday. Many thanks to all those who have already ordered!

If I have successfully mastered the technology, there should be a slide show below. If it doesn’t come through, I’ll get some more tech support next week and try again. I wish you all a good weekend!

Over this next year, first graders will be answering the question: “Where does our food come from?” We will do a unit on plants and growing, a unit on soil and an animal study of worms. In the following pictures students are cleaning the crab apples that they have harvested. Next week we will make crab apple jelly!

This past week the second graders went out into the woods and found materials with which to build snail terrariums. I was very impressed to see how the students worked together to assemble the materials. The students were asked to work in groups of 3 or 4 to create one snail terrarium per group. They talked with one another and took turns adding materials to their plastic boxes. They offered differing opinions about how much soil to add, whether to add sticks or not, etc. Students stated their opinions and (with only a little prompting from me) then gave reasons for their beliefs. They listened to each other’s  reasonings and then made group decisions.  Watching this all happen was extremely gratifying for me as a teacher. I have taught Science to this group for two years and have watched their growth since Kindergarten. Amazing!

The following pictures are of students doing snail observations.