Releasing of our Butterflies

Friday was most definitely one of the most exciting days in the second grade. I'm sure your children have been sharing with you about their Painted Lady Butterfly. We celebrated raising our caterpillars to adulthood by releasing these beautiful fragile insects into their natural environment on Friday afternoon. It was a perfect warm sunny day to watch our butterflies flutter into the sky. Excitement has been building over the past couple of weeks as we have observed the stages of the Life Cycle of the Painted Lady Butterfly from caterpillar to the chrysalis to butterfly. It was fascinating to watch this week as the butterflies slowly emerged from their chrysalises.  The students have documented each stage of the life cycle by taking  pictures on the ipads. They are also working on creating their own butterfly books using crayon resist illustrations.

Some video clips of our exciting day

Science Standard
2.3. Life Cycles: Recognize that plants and animals have life cycles, and that life cycles vary for different living things

Electrical Safety Visit

Last week the students at Fuller Meadow School  had their annual visit from Mr. Gouley to learn about electrical safety. One of the special privileges of being a second grader is getting to see the electrical trucks up close and meeting the Middleton electrical workers in person.  One of the highlights is watching one of the electric men go up way up in the sky in the bucket truck. Be sure to ask your child what they learned about Electrical Safety and how it can save lives.

Spring Tree, Caterpillars and More

Mrs. Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars hit the ground running this past week with all kinds of fun learning activities. Everyone enjoyed sharing about their April vacation. It was fun to share all the comments and pictures on the padlet.

On Wednesday we took advantage of a beautiful spring afternoon and went outside to observe the changes in our spring tree. Second graders love being scientists with their magnifying glass. We noticed our tree is not bare anymore and tiny green buds are growing on the branches.

Spring Tree Observations

One of the most exciting activities in the second grade happened this week. Our very own caterpillars arrived!  We will be observing our caterpillars and learning about the Life Cycle of the Butterfly for the next few weeks. The students were so excited to start researching about the Painted Lady Butterfly on the ipads. The smiles say it all!

Researching the Painted Lady Life Cycle

On Thursday afternoon we participated in our first Mystery Geography Skype. Each class took turns asking yes and no questions to discover where each class is located.  The students then took turns sharing information about each state/town. The class we skyped with was from Texas where it is 85 degrees! This is such a great way to learn geography skills and about different communities.

Geography Mystery Skype

This week we were very fortunate to conclude our DASH program with a guest speaker. Mr. Andrew LaPointe came to Fuller Meadow to share with the students about what is like to be blind. He brought his guide dog, Shubert and many of his devices that help him with the tasks of daily life. The children asked lots of interesting questions and that helped them to understand that visually impaired/blind people can do almost everything that sighted people can do.

DASH Speaker

On Friday morning we participated in Walk to School Day and started our day with a walk around Brigadoon neighborhood. It was a great way to start the day. While we were walking we noticed lots of different signs of spring.

Happy April Vacation

 Mrs. Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars have some great ideas for vacation week that they shared in this video. I hope everyone has a fun April vacation week.  Please add pictures or comments to the vacation padlet during the week so we can share about our vacation week when we return.

Created with Padlet

Poetry With Our Kindergarten Buddies

Since April is national poetry month one of our Fuller Meadow Traditions is to celebrate by sharing poetry with our  buddy class the Friday before April vacation. We shared many of our favorite poems from our poetry notebooks with Mrs. Libby's kindergartners. The kindergartners enjoyed showing off their reading by sharing their favorite poems with their second grade buddy. The second graders also did a retelling of the folktale, The Mitten using stick puppets. It was a fun afternoon for all.

Dash Week 3

Our final week of DASH was super interesting. The second graders explored different stations for the visually impaired in small groups. One group used adaptive aides to help visually impaired children do many of the same things that we can do such as read books, play cards, and play wonder ball. The students also learned how to write their name in braille using the braille alphabet and a stylus. Another activity was using a brailler machine to type our initials. The children also were able to experience what is like to walk by yourself when you are blind. Each student used a walking stick to help them navigate the obstacles in the hallway. Hopefully, the Fuller Meadow second graders have learned to have  an awareness of what it is like to have a visual disability as well as  how we can help and have empathy for visually impaired people. Most importantly visually impaired people can do almost everything sighted people can do.  We have two more DASH activities to look forward to, a special guest speaker on April 28th and a visit from Helen Keller at the end of May.Thank you again to our parent volunteers who made this program possible for our students.

Nutrition

During the month of March which is Nutrition month Mrs.Marshall taught us about how to be

healthy eaters. The first lesson was learning about the food groups and how to make a healthy plate. The second graders each were able to create their own healthy plate. The next lesson was about reading labels on foods and figuring out the sugar content of some of our snacks. We were very surprised by the amount of sugar in some of our snacks that we thought were "healthy". During our  final lesson we worked in stations on different healthy activities. The activities were exercise/aerobic activities, a nutrition Kahoot game, and the card game Go Food (Go Fish). This past week was healthy color week. Everyone brought in a colorful healthy snack everyday. We had great healthy snacks everyday! Thank you to Mrs. Marshall for teaching us how to keep our bodies healthy.

Our Food Plates

Measuring Sugar Grams

Red Healthy Snacks