Four Winds - Owls

Today was one of the best Four Winds programs of the year (as many students exclaimed at the end)!  Jenn Kerner came in and taught the children all about owls,  Some of the things she talked about were their eating habits, that they are nocturnal, that their wings are big and silent when they fly, and how their eyes help them to hunt at night.  The big hit was when children were invited to take apart an owl pellet (a handout went home on these today).  Here are some pictures from our adventures!

Flynn Theater

Today we traveled to the Flynn Theater to see If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.  It was an amazing performance and everyone loved it! Here are just a few pictures of us getting ready. (We weren't allowed to take pictures during the performance) 

 We were excited and ready to leave UMS!

 

 



 Everyone was super happy to be sitting in comfortable cushioned seats that bounced up and down!  We were one of the first schools there so we were checking things out by looking all around!

Not only were we one of the first schools to arrive, we were also seated in the balcony!  Everyone had a great time!



Taiko Drummers

We are so lucky to have Stuart Peton visiting UMS!  We have learned some amazing Japanese drumming skills and we have more to learn in the days to come.  Just a reminder that we have a whole school presentation next Tuesday, March 19th at the CHS Gymnasium.  I will meet students there at 6:15 and they will stay with me throughout the performance.  Please have your child wear their UMS tshirt.  See you Tuesday!


Here are some pictures from our school wide meeting and our practice session with Stuart.

Stuart Peton was introducing himself to the students of UMS.

 

 



 

 Everyone was listening so intently to Stuart explain how to sit and breathe.

 

 

 

Students were practicing their "rest position".

 

We finally had a chance to play the drums! They are learning an amazing routine!

 

 



 

Here we are at the end of an exciting lesson!

Valentine Party

Tomorrow, February 14th, we will be having a valentine's party! Everyone is invited to bring valentines that we will share at the end of the day. If your child would like to hand out valentine's, they are more than welcome to! My only rule is that every child must receive a card so that  no one's feelings get hurt.

We will have our class party in Room 9 from 2:10 - 2:50.  All parents and siblings are welcome to attend!  We will eat some yummy food and read our valentine's! I hope you all have a great Valentine's Day!

School Wide Meeting

Today, February 13th, our class presented a Valentine song and some poems in front of the entire school! Everyone did a great job! Here are some pictures from our adventure!

Here we are, lined up in front of the school, ready to perform our Valentine song!

 



Here are 5 friends sharing their Valentine's poems.  They did a great job speaking slowly, pronouncing each word, and using a clear voice!

100th Day Celebration

Today is the 100th day of school!! We have celebrated all day! We received special stickers, made amazing crowns, counted out a special snack, wrote 2 books that had to do with 100, and participated in many activities centered around the number 100!  We had a great day! Here are some pictures from our fun filled day!

Coloring our 100th day crowns!

 We made a yummy snack with 10 pieces of Chex cereal, 10 marshmallows,10 chocolate chips, 10 butterscotch chips, 10 M&M's, 10 peanuts, 10 pretzels, 10 raisins, 10 cashews, and 10 Cheerio pieces!  It was delicious!

We also practiced waiting our turn as we made our snack! 

 

 

We had such an amazing day that the pictures don't even begin to show how much fun we had!

iPads

Today, we had the opportunity to explore and play with 9 of the UMS iPads!  Each child was paired with a partner and they were given the task to look at all of the math apps on the iPad and decide which app they thought was the best for our second grade learners.  Before each group set off to explore, we generated a list of criteria that we wanted to think about when we were testing the apps. Here is a list of criteria we decided on!

1. Is the app easy to use?
2. Does the app actually teach what I need to practice (we looked at adding and subtracting)
3. Does the app help me if I give the wrong answer?
4. Is the app fun to play?

We also decided that each group had to give reasons as to why they picked the app as their favorite (and they couldn't just say it was fun!).  They had to be specific and use evidence from the app to support their reasoning. Here are some pictures from our exploration!

 This pair liked the math app called Math Monster.  They told us, "You can earn money to build your rocket by doing addition and subtraction problems."

This pair liked the math app called Math Puppy.  They said, "The game is fun and it doesn't take too long to complete.  We like that it is short."

This partner team liked the app Math Puppy because, "It gave us both addition and subtraction problems. Every time we were right, the puppy would do tricks which were fun to watch!"

 



This team liked the app Hungry Fish  because, "When the fish eats the correct number bubble, the fish gets bigger and healthier."



 

This pair also liked the Hungry Fish app.  They said, "You can make the bubbles bigger by adding two numbers together. As the fish eats the bubbles, the bubble would pop feeding the fish."



 Hungry Fish  was a favorite app of this pair as well.  They liked this game because, "The game can be made harder by adding multiple numbers together to make bigger bubbles for the fish to eat."

This was the only pair that picked Math Bingo  because, "There are different math levels you can play. You can play addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division."

My last pair liked Math Master  because "It was really fun to build a rocket and the math wasn't too hard!"

 

 

We had a great time using the iPads and we can't wait for our next exploration time!