Columbus Day at WHE

WHE students had a shortened week due to the celebration of Columbus Day on Monday. The students in our class worked on a few projects pertaining to Columbus and talked about his voyage to the Americas. Our weekly literature theme centered on animal rescue as we read our mai selection "A Habor Seal Pup Grows Up."

We moved into a new section in our math series. We have been discussing new ways to improve our subtraction skills. It's great to see students whom struggle with traditional subtraction methods "switch on" when a new method is introduced.

Our science unit took us on a planting adventure. We planted bean seeds in egg shells and will follow the progress of each seed as they mature. Every three days we will unearth a seed and check the progress.

WHE celebrated Jump Rope for Heart this week as each class jumped during PE time on Thursday. Our rainy week kept PE activities inside as we watched the skies for a change. With the weather turning to fall, we look forward to some leaf experiments next week and will start a new unit on community helpers in our reading series. Spelling and handwriting skills continue to improve in our class as we learn more difficult words.

The class Halloween party is coming up and we look forward to parent/teacher conferences soon. I hope all the parents are prepared to see the great work their second graders are doing.

Rainy Week at WHE

Fall weather has hit Northern Greene County in full force. The rain settled in early on in the week and stuck it out until Friday. Our reading, science and social studies units all coordinated this week to bring together a multitude of lessons on planting, growing and harvesting.

On Monday, the entire school (in two shifts) rode to Jerseyville to see the movie "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs". It was a great day as we all had popcorn and soda and enjoyed a great time with all of the staff. The movie only cost each student $1.00 as Greene Gables, The White Hall Lions Club and the Mansfield's covered a majority of the expenses.

Our reading series covered a great Eric Carle book "The Tiny Seed." We also worked on placing a sweet potato in water that will grow a vine. Our science series focused on plants and their components. The class discussed roots, leaves, stems and flowers. We plan on continuing this study next week and make a poster about how plants grow.

Our math unit focused on some new skills in weighing and measuring. We were able to use some of our new skills in centers as the class estimated and weighed almost everything in our room.

We finished our week with an assembly from the White Hall Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department. The class really enjoyed going through the smokehouse and shooting water from a real fire hose.

We look forward to discussing Columbus day next week and starting a unit on animal rescue. One of the most interesting stories we will look at is about the rescue of a harbor seal pup. We hope to have a speaker come and talk about some local animal rescue projects that exist right here in our community.

There will be an elementary school dance at the high school sponsored by the North Greene High School Band. Many of the students attend this event and it is a great start to a long three-day weekend.

Fall Weather Highlights Busy Week

We have had a very busy week at White Hall Elementary. We started the week off with a bus evacuation drill and received our mid-term report cards. We finished the week with a well attended open house with several students and parents attending. We have fourteen students in our class and 11 students were represented. We showcased some great work from each student and talked a lot about writing and reading progress.

We have just finished our first unit of six in our Language Arts Curriculum, Treasures. Our main selection this week was about a girl named Yoon who immigrated to America. Our week consisted of spelling words, vocabulary words, and supplemental stories about coming to America.

We learned some great new math skills this week. We have been spending a lot of time on "double" facts and how to improve our skills with some shortcuts that make sight addition a part of our math skill set. We had the opportunity to do some painting in the Audobon tradition with Mrs. Winters and Mrs. Painter. We learned about Audobon and painted some blue birds.

Next week promises to be an exciting week. We have an all school field trip on Monday to see "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" at the Jerseyville Theater. We will also have our Fire Awareness assembly and smokehouse tour on Friday.

The students have done very well on their spelling this week. Over half of the class scored a perfect 15 out of 15. Keep working on that spelling!!!

With the weather changing our recess time has included coats and jackets. We had one day of inside recess because of rain but we have had a great time enjoying the fall weather.