Soil Researchers

Digging for soil

In science, we have been learning about rocks and soil.  We learned that soil is made of two things - rocks and humus.  We know a lot about rocks already and so we learned that humus is decayed Earth material, such as plants or animals.

Last week we observed soil that we made in the classroom.  We noticed that the soil was made of different sized rocks - sand, clay, pebbles, and gravel - as well as humus.  When we added water to our vials of soil we saw that some of the humus floated and some of it did not!

Today we walked to the park and collected soil from a variety of places.  We then began comparing the soil that we made in the classroom to the soil we found at the park.  Even though all of the soil was from the same park, it still looked different based on where we found it.

We will continue our study of soil for the next few weeks - and see how it affects plants in the near future as well!

Swimming!

Today was our last Monday for swimming lessons!  We have one more make-up date for swimming on April 2nd.  If you can come volunteer to help supervise the locker rooms, please meet us in the lobby by 11:25 on that date.  It's been a lot of fun and we've learned so much already!

Advances in Chess

Today we began playing full games of chess!  This involved a LOT of concentration, strategy, and thinking - but it was also a lot of fun!  Over the next few weeks we'll be playing lots of chess to improve our defense and offense as players.

Queens Museum

Yesterday we went to the Queens Museum to see the Panorama of the City of New York.  It was a great experience to see such a beautiful scale model of all five boroughs.  We could really get a great sense of the size of each borough and the geography of our city.  If you've never been, check it out!

After seeing the panorama, we went to a workshop where we created city blocks of our own.  We discussed that much like the panorama is a model, we were creating models.  We said that model was a smaller version of a real thing that also usually used different materials than the real thing.  We also thought about the colors the creators of the panorama used (green for parks, blue for water, white/yellow for sand) and created a city block using lots of materials.  We worked really hard on our great models!

Yoga

Today we had a special yoga session!  We peacefully gathered our thoughts, stretched our bodies, and calmed our breathing this afternoon.  It was a great way to end our day together.

Reading Olympics

Yesterday packets for the Reading Olympics went home.  Please read through the information with your child and keep both the form and the envelope in a safe place over the next few weeks.  Students in second grade have the option of either reading 10 different books in the month of March or reading for 10 hours (more appropriate, perhaps, for longer chapter books).  Ask family and friends to pledge to your Reading Olympics sheet.  The suggested amount is at least $1 per book/hour.  Envelopes with the completed forms (regardless of the money) will be collected on Friday, April 4th.  Over the last few years, we have raised a lot of money for our drama, art, and music programs at EVCS.  Happy reading!