Groundhog's Day is important to Mrs. White.  She used to work at the Lutz Children's Museum in Manchester, CT. 

GROUNDHOG

by Avery

Groundhog's Day is coming soon.

Round 'n round the groundhog goes looking for his shadow.

Out comes the groundhog!

Underground the groundhog is sleeping.

Now the groundhog doesn't see his shadow.

Down goes the groundhog, he doesn't see his shadow.

How will the groundhog get out of his hole?

Out of the groundhog hole, Here he comes!

Go see if your shadow awaits you, Groundhog!

Noam's Haiku

Doug was a groundhog.

He didn't know his whole day.

He thought friends were weird,

Here is Claire's acrostic poem for PeeWee the Groundhog from Vermont.

Pleasant Groundhog Partner

Eats that yummy corn

Even if it's torn corn

With me, now

Eating plants

Today we watched the Inauguration of the President of the United States. We watched the preparations in our classroom. Mrs. White streamed it from Hulu.com and projected it on a big screen. We watched the actual Inauguration in the cafeteria with the rest of our school. (Our prinicipal rented a giant TV so we could all watch together.)

We also Twittered with Kinderkids in New Hampshire and Snappity in Maine. Snappity told us that the best thing about today was: "watching history be made with my 2.5 year old daughter on my lap. (She thinks the best thing today is the cookie she is eating.)"

We each completed the sentence: I think the best thing about today is:

I got to see Obama on TV. I wish Obama comes to our school. (Jeremiah)

that Obama got elected and maybe Obama did the "Elected Boogey Dance" (Zivi)

I hope Obama can come to our school so we can see him. (Cody)

the Inauguration. I liked the Band Music. I liked when they introduced everyone. It is SO cool! He's the first African-American President! (Claire)

that Obama got elected! We got to watch the Inauguration! (Elias)

that Obama got elected! (Noam)

I am glad Obama is President. (Korren)

a black person got picked and I voted for him! (Kell)

the Inaugural Party (Jonah)

that a black person was chosen. (Jen)

I got to watch the Inauguration Party this morning. It was very cool watching Obama become President. (Avery)

I got to watch Obama on TV. (Lili)

that Obama is the President and that he is the first President that is black. (Brooklyne)

We listened and read Nikki Giovanni's poem about Barack Obama.

Dave Mallett wrote a song for the Inauguration Day.  He's a musician from Maine.  He wrote the Garden Song.  His nephew goes to our school.

We saw a picture posted by KerryGallivan who Twittered this picture of people leaving the Capitol Building after the Inauguration.  Mr. Gallivan also told us: "The most exciting so far was the Capital Building -it's amazing today."

We looked at this Wordle from another Twitterer named RichWhite.  (He is not related to Mrs. White.)  It is a word cloud from President Obama's Inaugural Address.

We looked at the old White House web site and the new one.  We thought it was cool that there was a blog on the new site.  We wrote a comment and asked some questions.  We used this form to add to the blog.  It's different from our blog because everyone can't read the comments.

We couldn't do this pop-up project at school because it takes too much color ink.  It was designed by Carol Barton.

We talked about why today is important.  One reason is that it was a peaceful change of leadership in a democracy.  Another reason is that it is important whenever someone promises to to do their best and both Barack Obama and Joe Biden promised to do their best today.  It also is important because Barack Obama is the first non-white person to be elected to the office of President of the United States.

We will remember this day!

PS  We also had great fun playing in about 3 feet of snow after the Inauguration Ceremony!

Room 8 loves poetry! Here is a book from

that celebrates Hanukkah.  Remember to click on the eyeballs to get a bigger window to view the book.

Along with the other first and second graders at our school, we learned about 6 different countries. Each teacher met with each group twice to teach us about a country. Our class was Israel. We presented to all the other classes.

First Nathan recited the Hebrew alphabet.

Then two of our other classmates sang a song of the Hebrew alphabet.

Then we read the ABC's of Israel book that we wrote.

Here is the website we used to learn about Israel. We also used a whole tubful of books from the library.

Israel For Kids

This morning's Science Students from Dr. Henry's class taught us about Dental Health.  Brett, Jackie, Jameson, and Stu asked us why we have teeth.  Brooklyne said it was so we could eat.  Jen said it was to chew and Avery said it was to chew food into little pieces to start the digestive process.  (He remembered that from some of the other science students.)  Brett told us that we also use our teeth for smiling and Jackie showed us how hard it would be to tallk without our teeth.  Next they asked us if we knew why our teeth are shaped the way they are.  Jen answered that different teeth had different jobs.  She said that the back teeth were for chewing and the front teeth were for biting.  Jen also knew that people grow different teeth at different ages.  (We think that since she knows so much about teeth and that since she loves animals that she should be an animal dentist when she grows up.)  Brett told us that its bad to grind our teeth and its bad to eat lots of sugary foods.

We divided into two groups.  One group showed us how to floss and how to brush your teeth and how long to brush your teeth.  The other group showed us what happened to our teeth when you don't brush.  These used Tums as teeth and put one in a glass of water and one in a glass of vinegar.  We learned a lot from these college students.

Healthy Teeth 

Teeth and Stuff

Maria and Robin from Dr. Henry's class at UMAINE came to talk to us about the Digestive System. They gave us an outline of a person on a piece of paper. They had us draw a piece of food just outside of the mouth. The first part of the digestive system is the mouth. The mouth makes the food smaller. Saliva (or spit) makes the food really soft and mushy so it can go down the esophagus. Next we drew chewed up pieces of food in the mouth and a mushy ball of food in the esophagus. (The esophagus looks like a long tube.) We thought food just slid down the esophagus but then we learned that Maria can swallow food when she is standing on her head. (This is NOT something to try at home. Maria has been practicing this for 23 years.) Maria stood on her hands and chewed a piece of bread and then swallowed the bread. This proved that the esophagus is a muscle that squeezes food down to the stomach. The stomach has digestive juices which help dissolve the food. Next Maria and Robin gave us a baggie that was supposed to be our stomach. Each baggie had a piece of bread in it. Then the College Scientists poured some "digestive juice" in each baggie stomach. Real digestive juice is acidic so the pretend 'digestive juice' is acidic too. Acidic things help break things down. We made predictions or hypothesis on what we thought would happen when the 'digestive juice' mixed with the bread. Zivi noticed that the bread turned a pinkish red color. Korren noticed that the bread was soaking up the 'digestive juice.' Next we learned that the stomach has muscles that mush the food up. So we used our hands to mush the stomach up. The inside got really gross. Jen noticed that the bread got absorbed by the juice. Eventually all the bread gets dissolved into nutrients before it goes into the intestines. It was interesting to learn that the muscles of the stomach play an important part in digestion. Maria and Robin told us that the stomach takes 2 -3 hours to digest food. Jen wants to know why the stomach doesn't dissolve from the digestive acid. Maria and Robin told us that the stomach has a special lining to protect the stomach from the digestive acid. The next group will tell us what happens next in the digestion process. That should be real interesting! Maria and Robin and Dr. Henry and Mrs. White would like us to try this experiment at home with a grown-up. Get a strong zip-lock style baggie and put a piece of food in it. Add a little bit of grapefruit juice or lemon juice or orange juice - these juices are about as acidic as digestive juice. Seal the top of the baggie carefully. Get the grown-up to double check this step. Use your hands to be the stomach muscles and mush the food up. Keep track of how long it takes for it to dissolve. Use the comments section to tell us what you did and what happened. Did different foods take different times to digest? Did different amounts of digestive juice make a difference in the amount of time it took to dissolve the food? What else can you try? What else can you notice?

Websites:

Gross and Cool Body

Kids Biology

Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that is wonderful to celebrate in the here and now. We are grateful for family and friends and food and shelter. We are so very fortunate in so many ways. However, celebrating Thanksgiving as a time when the Pilgrims and the Native Americans worked together is not exactly accurate. The Pilgrims were invaders and considered the Native Americans as less than human. The Plimouth Plantation site in Plymouth, Massachusetts offers viewers a chance to be historians and think about what really happened at that first Thanksgiving. Another part of the Plimouth Plantation site offers a variety of activities for kids including a homework help section.

I bet you thought I couldn't find another chicken based story for Thanksgiving! Well, I did find one and everyone in Room 8 enjoyed it very much. There are a lot of obvious jokes and some not so obvious jokes in Beauty and the Beaks: A Turkey's Cautionary Tale.

Another group from Dr. Henry's science class came to visit us this morning.  Ben, Mike, Sarah, and Erin talked to us about the 5 senses.  First we identified the senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. 

Ben showed us a diagram of the eye.  Nathan thought that the diagram looked like a fish.  We learned that the pupil is the dark spot and the iris is the colored part.   Ben told us that when the pupil gets smaller or larger it is actually the muscles of the iris contracting or expanding as a reaction to the light.  Ben told us that rods help us see at night and that cones help us see color.  He also told us that the eye turns everything upside down and the optic nerve turns it rightside up when it 'talks' to the brain.  The eyelid helps protect our eye.

Mike showed us a poster about hearing.  We learned that sound is a vibration.  The ear feels the vibrations through the ear drum and little ear bones.  The ear is very important because if you lose your hearing, you can have trouble with balance as well as not being able to hear.  It's important to keep our ears safe.

Sarah taught us about the sense of touch.  Jen said that touch was important because if you didn't have it you could burn your fingers off if you touched a hot stove.  She showed us a diagram of the skin.  (A diagram is a picture with labels.)  Some nerves are more sensitive than others.  This is because some places have more nerve endings than others.  The tongue has lots of touch nerves.

Erin talked to us about 2 senses.  The first was taste.  She showed us a diagram of the tongue.  We learned that we have over 10,000 taste buds on our tongues!  Taste buds are made up of receptor cells.  These cells send messages to the nerves that send messages to the brain so we know what we are tasting.

Erin taught us a new word -olfaction.  That means to smell.  The olfactory region in the brain looks like a toothbrush!  We have 2 new nasal cavities.

Next we broke up into 4 groups.  We got to see and learn more things about the senses. 

 Noam's favorite activity was guessing what we touched.  He taught  Sarah that golf balls have rubber bands inside them.

Brooklyne learned that when you shine a light in your eyes the pupil gets smaller because the iris muscles contract or get smaller.

Jen's favorite part the touching activity.

Kell learned  that some part of the ear can help you balance.

Here are two websites about the 5 Senses:

Neuroscience for Kids: The Five Senses

Zoom Sense It Activities

Today we had visitors from Dr. Henry's science seminar at UMAINE.  (Dr. Henry is Kell's mom.)  Ashley, Emily, and Bailey taught us about fingerprints.  Ashley taught us that everyone in the whole world has a different fingerprint and different footprints!  Even the twins' fingerprints are different from each other!  Emily taught us about the history of fingerprints.  They were first used to identify people in 1906 by the New York Police Department.  That was just over 100 years ago which is kind of a long time ago for our lives but not for how long the earth has been around.  (Noam noticed that fact.)  She also taught us that there are three types of fingerprints - the arch, the whirl, the loop.  We looked at them using ELMO (document viewer) and the projector.  It was very interesting.  Bailey was next and she told us how fingerprints are collected.  Sometimes special fingerprint powder is used.  The powder sticks to the oil from the skin.  Sometimes superglue is used to see fingerprints.  Some fingerprints are scanned into a computer to be studied.  Fingerprints on metal are seen by using electricity.  Ashley, Emily, and Bailey then put us into three groups and helped us use washable markers to record our own fingerprints. 

We learned a lot!

Nathan learned that everyone has different fingerprints.

Devon's favorite part was making fingerprints.

Cali learned that fingerprints could be left on almost everything.

Jonah's favorite part was looking at our own fingerprints using ELMO and the projector.

Here are a couple of websites about fingerprints.

FBI Kids

Zoom Fingerprints

Veteran's Day is November 11, 2008.  We won't be in school that day but there are lots of projects you can do at home to honor the veterans of the United States.  You can go to the Veteran's Day parade in Bangor.  You could visit the Cole Transportation Musuem in Bangor to learn about Veterans.  You could also visit this website from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs called VA Kids K-5 or the 2008 Veterans Day Teacher Resource Guide. 

This is a wonderful book to read aloud together as a family.  Look for it at your library.