Mrs. Harju’s Classroom Blog

2nd Graders made their First Communion today, May the 4th, STAR WARS Day. (May the 4th Be With You!)

Picture it! 2013- Mondrian With a Twist
I was thrilled to meet Jen Wagner of Projects by Jen in person at the ICE Conference in February. Jen is so creative, organized and busy! I was curious to see if she really existed and was just one person. She is real and as amazing in person.
Her latest project is called Picture it! 2013 – Mondrian with a Twist.

Our classroom was grouped with 23 other classrooms around the US and Canada. Each classroom contributes one piece to a Mondrian inspired piece of artwork. We mail a copy of our section to each school, and they mail their sections to us. It is always fun to get snail mail, and as each piece arrives we enjoy reading about the school that created it and adding it to our hallway Mondrian display. Below is a video showing the pieces we have received so far and we will be adding to this as more pieces come in and when we add our own piece. We still need to mail our own piece! The second video shows some Mondrian inspired artwork the students created in the iMac Lab using Skitch. Skitch is a free drawing program. We like the old version of Skitch for Mac.

We had a wonderful time at the Critter Barn in Zeeland, Michigan. http://www.critterbarn.org
We started the day feeding the goats, sheep, cows and baby calves. We saw Jake the donkey and Miss Mary’s horse. We learned about pigs, chickens, bunnies and more. We feed the chickens and learned about how the eggs are collected on a conveyor belt. Miss Mary’s pet pot bellied pig did some tricks for us.
After lunch we visited the cat pen, bunnies and ducks. We held baby chicks, petted more rabbits and quietly looked at the tiny baby bunnies. We went in the sheep pen to see (and hear!) the mother and baby lambs. We got to feel wool that came from one of the sheep and twist it and see how yarn is made.
Miss Mary let us all milk one of the goats, and then we fed the baby lambs and goats with bottles. The baby goats were a little hard to handle. They ran all over the place and did not want to sit still and drink their milk. A turkey kept walking around the farm, making a lot of noise.
We were a bit tired on the bus ride back to school and a few of the second graders fell asleep! It was a great day.

Our new iMac lab was installed in January. We love learning in our new iMac Lab! On our daily (sometimes 2-3 times a day!) visits to the lab you will find us creating stories using Storybird, reading the Storybird stories created by our classmates, posting on our Kidblogs, commenting on the Kidblog posts of others, making music with Garageband, reading and listening to the stories we created using the My Story App on the iPads, mastering math skills on ixl, reading and Accelerated Reader testing, adding widgets, images and other content to our wiki pages, watching videos made as a class, and more!

We had a great time comparing fairy tales and writing some new tales. We began by reading several versions of Little Red Riding Hood. We read “Red Riding Hood” by James Marshall, “Lon Po Po” a Chinese version by Ed Young, and “Pretty Salma” an African tale by Niki Daly . The children compared the characters; Red Riding Hood, Grandmother, Mother, Wolf and Woodcutter and talked about how they were the same and different in each story.
The children worked in groups of 3 or 4 to brainstorm new characters and settings. Each group then used a writing template to write a Red Riding Hood story. After these stories were edited, the groups worked on illustrating their characters and choosing the setting. They took turns practicing reading the story aloud and moving the characters in and out using the Puppet Pals App on the iPad. We purchased the Puppet Pals Director’s Pass so the children could upload their own images for the characters and to also have access to the other character and background sets.

You will find the rest of the students’ Red Riding Hood videos on our wiki. http://harju.wikispaces.com/Fairy+Tales

Under the direction of Miss Brenton, our student teacher, the students read “Patrick’s Dinosaurs” and “What Happened to Patrick’s Dinosaurs?” by Carrol Carrick. After reading Patrick’s ideas about what may have happened to the dinosaurs, the children shared their ideas about the fate of the dinosaurs. Some thought they were sent to outer space, some thought the dinosaurs grew tiny and are still here, and others said they died due to cold, heat or lack of food. The children then wrote down their ideas as a story and illustrated it as well. Then they again used the My Story App on the iPad to publish the stories.

You can find the Dinosaur Stories Here.

The second graders used Educreations on iPads to demonstrate multiplication. They first drew a picture using the Drawing Box lite Free App, and used this picture in their multiplication story.
The stories are either showing multiplication as a number of groups with the same number in each group, or multiplication as an array.
The second graders found the App easy to use and their stories are uploaded to a website which makes it easy to grab the link and share the stories. You will find the rest of the children’s multiplication stories on our Kidblogs.

The second graders had a great time publishing their stories using the My Story App on the iPads. The App made it easy to put together the writing, artwork, and narration. The stories can be viewed as an iBook or on the web. We published them to our class wiki – Read them here.

This is the first story the second graders published using the iPad. We used our mitten art and other drawings we created in class in addition to pictures the students created using the My Story App. The children added the text of the story and then were able to record their voice reading the text. They published the story and were easily able go back to the App any time to edit, or make changes to the story. The children were very much engaged when working on the stories and using the iPad. My usually wiggly, chatty 2nd graders were quietly working and on task as they helped each other and worked on their stories. The room was humming with the beautiful sounds of engaged children learning and having fun!

We are having fun learning about the Water Cycle and exploring our new school set of 30 iPads! Today we used Drawing Box (free version) to create illustrations of The Water Cycle. The children created pictures showing evaporation, condensation and precipitation. After saving the pictures to the iPad camera roll, the students opened the Popplet Lite App and put the pictures together adding titles and a few descriptive words. You will find Danny’s Water Cycle Popplet below and you can find the rest on our class wiki. More will be added as the children finish them.