Bittersweet

The end of the school year is always bittersweet for me. I'm looking forward to spending time with my girls, camping, reading, taking naps :)... but I miss my sweet second graders. I hope everyone has a fantastic summer!

Field Day

Field day was originally scheduled for Friday, June 8... along with Camp Linwood. But, the weather forecast didn't look very good, so we moved it to Monday June 11. Thank goodness!! It poured down rain on Friday, and Monday was beautiful. We had so much fun... what a great way to end the year!

  

Assembly Performance

The mayor of Milwaukie, Jeremy Ferguson, was at our school presenting an award to one of the 5th grade students. Our second grade classes had the privilege of singing for him!

They did a great job... check it out!

Another Experiment!

Along with our plant experiments, we checked out our own version of a water cycle. It was a nice, warm week... so we could see the condensation on the bags very quickly!

Plants... continued!

Along with our Plants A, B, and C... we also tried a little experiment with celery and carnations. We learned that plants "drink" in water through their roots, pull it up through their stem (like a straw!) and finally, it goes out to the leaves and petals.

We put a bunch of white carnations in blue food coloring, and a couple of stalks of celery in purple food coloring. (Why celery? The long crunchy part that people eat is the stem!) After a few hours, and then a couple of days, we checked back to see what had happened.

 Can you see the blue starting to appear in the petals?

This photo was a few days after we started our experiment. The celery tops were starting to get a little gross, but you could definitely see the color!

Plants!

We read A Tiny Seed by Eric Carle in our reading series.  It worked out well since we've been studying life science! As we read the story, we learned more about plants and what they need to grow and flourish. (Our new favorite vocabulary word!)

As we read and talked about what plants might need to survive, we made a few predictions about which of our plants would flourish. It's been nice and sunny out, so we're getting plenty of sunshine! 

We feel a little sorry for Plant C... stuck away in our closet!

Earthworms!

Our science unit began on worms and what they do for our environment. First, we needed to inspect them.

We "borrowed" the worms from Mrs. McGraw's compost bins. So, not only did we learn about how worms help us... we got to see their work in action. (Well, kind of...!)

While we were checking out the worms, we were also taking a close look at the soil. What is in the compost soil? We jotted down a few notes about what we saw.

Later, we planted a few flowers in the front of the school. We used some of the compost soil and our worm friends to add to the dirt. It was one of the hottest days this spring... we were all pink cheeked when we were done! Whew!