Maps of the Land of Centimeter

We second graders are problem solvers!  Princess Funer of the Land of Centimeter first contacted us because carrying around a lot of centimeter bricks was too heavy.  We suggested using just one brick over and over.  It worked, but it was still heavy.  Then we traced the bricks on paper to use.  They kept blowing away!  After that, we made a measuring tool by tracing 30 bricks all together.  This worked perfectly!  Princess Funer used her magic to turn our paper tools into durable plastic tools.  She named these tools after her family: They're rulers!  We used these rulers to create maps of the Land of Centimeter!  We first decided where the King's castle, Princess Funer's castle, the King's Garden, and Pim's House (he was the winner of the long-jump competition we first were called in to help with) should be.  We measured the roads between each place.  We then added new places to our maps:  From hospitals to soccer stadiums, from beaches to graveyards, we have awesome ideas for the Land of Centimeter.  Stop by the hallway near Room 402 to check them out!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a wonderful four-day weekend with family and friends!  Today's Harvest Festival was a great success, with our class bringing in 59 cans to help those in need!  See you all on Monday at 8:30!

We did shared-writing this morning to
write a Thanksgiving Poem with Jessica

- Liz

Problem Solving for the Princess

We have been trying to problem-solve for Princess Funer in the Land of Centimeter all week.  Once we solve one problem, it seems another pops up!

The princess's first problem

On Tuesday we learned about her first problem:  The measuring-unit she had selected (centimeter bricks from the castle construction) was really heavy and carrying around a huge bag of them was hurting the villagers' backs.  We brainstormed lots of different solutions and found two that sounded worth trying.  One was that each person carries only one brick and uses it repeatedly.  The other was to trace the bricks onto lighter paper to use.

We tried the one-brick approach first.  We found that this worked well, but sometimes led to mistakes about how to count what we had drawn. (Do we could the lines? The spaces?)  Through lots of hard work, we found this to be a good strategy.  We sent our work to the Princess on Wednesday afternoon and awaited her verdict.

On Thursday morning we heard back from the Princess. She liked the idea, but thought that maybe tracing the bricks onto lighter paper would be even better for her aching shoulders and back.  So she tried it for us.  While it gave her accurate measurements, it was really tough to measure when it was windy, when  other people were around who might bump the light-weight paper bricks, or when the measurer is sneezing too much!  She asked if we could solve her next problem:  The paper bricks keep blowing away and getting bumped. We again brainstormed a list of ideas to help her.

The princess's second problem

On Friday, we decided to tape 30 of the paper bricks together to make one long measuring tool.  We tried it as a class and found that getting them just right was really difficult.  A student then suggested that we trace the bricks onto a long strip of paper and then not cut them out.  This seemed like a great idea, so we created long measuring tools made up of 30 centimeter cubes.

Before sending them to the princess, we tested them out by measuring some scary things from the Land of Centimeter - including the length of a paw-print from the ferocious Snugglewump.  We found that they were really useful and yet were lightweight enough to carry around.  We hope she likes them!  ...I wonder if she'll have another problem for us on Monday!

Town Meeting!

On Monday, November 25th our class will be hosting the school Town Meeting!  We will be up on stage, singing four songs loud and proud.  Since Thanksgiving is fast approaching and our Harvest Festival is next Wednesday, we have food on the brain - and three of our songs certainly show it!

We will be singing some songs we know well and some that are new.  We know This Land is Your Land very, VERY well since we sing it each week with Bradley during our Woodie Guthrie study on Fridays.  We also learned a few new songs, including one that seems to be a fast-favorite.  It has LOTS of new words though.  This weekend, ask your child to try to sing it without using the words.  It's a funny song about one of our favorite foods: Sandwiches!

Sandwiches are beautiful,
Sandwiches are fine.
I like sandwiches, I eat them all the time;
I eat them for my supper and I eat them for my lunch;
If I had a hundred sandwiches, I'd eat them all at once.

Once I went to England,
I visited the Queen,
I swear she was the grandest lady
That I've ever seen.
I told her she was beautiful
And could not ask for more,
She handed me a sandwich
And she threw me out the door.

Sandwiches are beautiful,
Sandwiches are fine.
I like sandwiches, I eat them all the time;
I eat them for my supper and I eat them for my lunch;
If I had a hundred sandwiches, I'd eat them all at once.

A sandwich may be egg or cheese
Or even peanut butter
But they all taste so good to me,
It doesn't even matter
Jam or ham or cucumber,
Any kind will do.
I like sandwiches,
How about you?

Sandwiches are beautiful,
Sandwiches are fine.
I like sandwiches, I eat them all the time;
I eat them for my supper and I eat them for my lunch;
If I had a hundred sandwiches, I'd eat them all at once.

Sandwiches are beautiful,
Sandwiches are fine.
I like sandwiches, I eat them all the time;
I eat them for my supper and I eat them for my lunch;
If I had a hundred sandwiches, I'd eat them all at once.

Land of Centimeter

Last night, something peculiar happened.  I was in the classroom when I heard a small tapping.  I looked around and didn't see anyone so I went back to work. I then heard the tapping again with a small "Hello?". Again, I looked around and didn't see anyone.  I walked out into the hall and then saw...a tiny hand waving hello.  From behind an empty bulletin board came a tiny woman dressed in a very fancy dress.  She said:

"Hello!  My name is Princess Funer.  I live in the Land of Centimeter!  My kingdom is a beautiful place where everyone is usually quite happy.  In the Land of Centimeter, we love to climb mountains, swim in cool rivers, farm in our beautiful fields, and compete in long-jump competitions.  Because I am the princess, I am in charge of awarding the winner of our long-jump competitions.  Recently, however, we've been having some problems.  You see, each jumper was allowed to measure his or her own jump. And not everyone was measuring with the same object. Some of the jumpers used markers to measure the length. Other jumpers used bricks. Yet others used shoes to measure how far they jumped. I couldn't figure out who won!  So we decided to use only one item to measure. As princess, I decided that we would only use the brightly colored bricks from my castle to measure distance. Because we live in the Land of Centimeter, I called them Centimeter Bricks.  Things went well - until our next long-jump competition was far away from the castle!  Carrying around lots and lots of bricks is hard work!  I need someone really smart to help me solve my problem: How can we keep using Centimeter Bricks to measure without having to carry around tons of bricks?"

Of course, my mind was racing!  How could I help this princess? And how did she get to our land?  The princess seemed to know what I was thinking and said, "My kingdom is a beautiful land that usually doesn't connect to other lands.  I needed help urgently, so I used my powerful magic to connect with your land.  I felt the presence of strong intelligence near this spot.  This portal will open only for you, though. Others will just see a picture of me near my castle. Only you can come through to the Land of Centimeter, much like only I can come through to your land."

Well of course I knew who to talk to!  Today I told the second graders everything.  They immediately said they wanted to help Princess Funer!  We first tested her theory that all jumpers had to use the same item to measure - and indeed, they did. It was so hard to compare two jumps when the jumpers had used differently sized objects to measure.  We knew that, indeed, she had a problem.

The princess had left them a series of tests to see if they were, indeed, up to the task.  First, they had to answer some questions to see if they could use the bricks (which are NOT heavy to us since we're so much bigger than she is!) to measure items from her kingdom. It was so interesting to see things that we thought were one thing turn out to be another. Like a pencil - in the Land of Centimeter, what we call a pencil, they call a light pole. They ram the point into the ground and hang their lanterns from the top. Or what we call a shovel, they call a bridge over their wide rivers!  We used the bricks I had borrowed from the princess to measure lots of items. As we measured, we thought of rules for measuring.  We then wrote down our ideas as a class:


- Use only one unit when measuring
- Start exactly at the beginning of the object
- Finish exactly at the end of the object
- Don't leave spaced between bricks
- Don't overlap bricks

After we had these rules and our measurements done, I took our work into the hallway and showed it to Princess Funer. She said it was the best work she'd ever seen by a group of measurers and enlisted us to help her.  Her problem seems difficult - but hopefully we can help her. How can she keep using Centimeter Bricks as her unit without having to carry around a heavy bag of bricks?

Our Evolving Map

As I wrote yesterday, we have traveled to the four ends of Manhattan - North, South, East, and West.  As we visited each place, we drew landmarks and important parts of the city, wrote about what we saw, and made great observations.  After each trip, we added to our map of Manhattan.  We started with only a few things:

- A green piece of paper that represented the land
- A blue piece of paper that represented the water
- A marker
- Some tape
- Some small cubes to make both bridges and EVCS
- Our observation papers/booklets

We also knew some facts about the geography of New York City and maps in general.  We first drew a compass rose (something we learned about with Leah) to get ourselves oriented. Then we talked about what we knew. We knew that it was split into 5 boroughs, although we weren't sure we knew what that meant. We knew that New Jersey was nearby. We knew that Manhattan was an island and that an island is land completely surrounded by water.  And we had heard of many other islands in the area.

We had many long classroom discussion about this. Where should our school be in relation to the water? To the bridges? To the island itself? What could we tell about where we were based on the length of each bus ride to get to different spots.

We revisited our map after each trip. Here is its progression:

First, we just had the East River and a bridge that we saw north of us.
We also used a yellow cube to mark where we thought EVCS was.

Next, we began creating the harbor. We saw at least 4 islands at the harbor.
We also drove past 3 bridges that we knew: the Williamsburg Bridge, the
Manhattan Bridge, and the Brooklyn Bridge. We also knew that New Jersey
was across from us when standing in Battery Park and that the
Brooklyn Bridge connected to Brooklyn.  Our school also moved further
south on our map.

Then we added the Hudson River. Since we could look south down
the river and see the Statue of Liberty, we figured out that the Hudson
River is connected to the harbor.

Today we discussed our final trip. We saw two rivers connect
and knew from our bus ride that the one river was still the Hudson River.
We also saw a bridge where those two rivers met. Some of us knew that
the new river was called the Harlem River and that the Bronx was
across from us.

Of course, this map does not look exactly like Manhattan - but it has much of the important details there. We also know that we are missing many important islands. One student is working to figure out the name of the first bridge we saw so that we can determine if Roosevelt Island is north of it or south of it.  Once we think our map is finalized, we'll create a large-scale map that we can start placing important landmarks and roads on.  Stay tuned!

Northern Manhattan

Walking along the water

Today we took our final research trip to learn about the geography of Manhattan.  We have previously gone to the East River, the Hudson River, and the harbor at the southern tip of Manhattan.  Today we went to the northern-most point of Manhattan to see the Hudson River connect to the Harlem River.  It was a beautiful day and we saw lots of new sights to add to our class map.  We even saw 8 bridges on our way there!

The weather was beautiful as we hiked upwards in Inwood Park to see the water, the bridges, and the Bronx.  We should have our class map finalized by the end of the week after we finish compiling all of our observations from the past month.  Stay tuned for that!

Musicians Among Us!

Last week we had an incredible assembly with Brent Daniels, an electronic musician.

Check out this link to learn more about the program:  Brent's Website

During the assembly, many kids from EVCS came up and had their voices recorded either singing, speaking, or beat-boxing.  All of us were also recorded clapping, stomping, and yelling, to create the percussion in the song.  It was then all put together by Brent into this great song, 100% created by the sounds of our students!

EVCS Song

We could not stay in our seats for a second during the assembly as we danced, bounced, and moved to the awesome beats!

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Since today is Wednesday, we had music class right before lunch.  Nina, however, was not here today and instead another musician, Shane, came to work with us.  We learned how to use one drum to make lots of different noises by changing our hand-shape and by hitting different parts of the drum.  We created some beautiful beats and rhythms.  After we played, Shane played some incredible songs for us using some very exotic drums, including on that sounded like the ocean and another that sounded like a cow moo'ing when he slid his finger across it.  It was a great morning for the musicians of our class!

Spinning

Today we began the second half of our science unit of Balance and Motion.  We began our discussion talking about the motion of spinning.  We discussed items that we know spin, and tops came up as a toy many students were familiar with.  From dreidels to Bey Blades, we know how to spin tops!  We were each given a green shaft and four different discs and were asked to build a stable top.  We certainly know a lot about making things stable from our work with balance!



We were each given a green shaft and both small (yellow) and large (red) discs.  Through trial and error, we created different tops.  We found that some tops spun longer and some spun slower...it seems to all depend on where we put the discs.  Through lots of experimenting, we each created a top that spun for at least 10 seconds.  Here's one spinning during science class:

As we learn more about spinning, we will be able to create better tops - as well as lots of other fun toys that spin.  Stay tuned!

Ferry Writing

We passed a ferry going in the other direction
as we approached the Statue of Liberty

Last week we put our researching hats on again and went to Battery Park and on the Staten Island Ferry to explore the southern tip of Manhattan.  Our map of NYC is certainly changing and growing back in the classroom!

 We also saw some incredible New York City landmarks.  We are learning about the importance of landmarks in social studies and in writing.  On this trip we saw some great parks, many important bridges, and the Statue of Liberty!  (As always, a huge thanks to all of the parents who made this trip possible!)  We took lots of notes that helped us continue our map work in the classroom.

In writing we are exploring landmarks - and we have all selected one to research and write our own All-About Informational Books about.  From the Statue of Liberty to Barclay's Center to the Empire State Building to the Met, we have lots of landmarks to learn about!  We followed the writing process in a very guided way when writing our All About Parks book , so now we know the steps and are working independently to plan/gather, draft, revise, edit, and publish our own nonfiction books!

On our tables we have charts to remind us of the steps of the writing process - and to keep track of where we each are.  This way, if we need a friend to help us edit, we can see who else is editing at the same time!  We simply move our clothespins around the chart as we work.  Right now we are all planning and gathering ideas. These charts in our classroom use our own work from the All About Parks book to remind of what each step means with concrete examples.

Once our books are published, we'll have a great writing celebration!  We will also be creating models of our landmarks to show what we know.  Stay tuned!

- Liz