Tribal Thunder was Great!

By the whole class. Typed by Mr. McGaughey

On March 7 and 8, Tribal Thunder came to our school to teach us about
drumming and lead us in a drum circle. Tribal Thunder are Oz, Joan and
Marcie. We got to play the drums. The air bazooka almost blew everybody
over. We liked the presentation. They showed us drums from all over the
world. Mr. McGaughey liked the water drum the best.

You can find out more about Tribal Thunder on their website at http://www.tribalthunder.com

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The Penny Experiment

Today we tried The Penny Experiment in our class. We read about how to do it in our Leap Out books. Then we listened to the directions on the computer. When we tried it, we put 45 pennies into a jar full of water before it dripped.

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Our Wrapping paper is finished

We finished our wrapping paper project just in time for Christmas.
Pictures of all the wrapping paper is on our website.

Click here
to see our wrapping paper designs.

Santa sent this letter to thank us for our hard work.

Dear Grade 2 Students at Parkview School:

Thank you for all your hard work on the wrapping paper for my printing
press. The elves scanned your pictures and put your designs into the
printing press. With your help, I had enough wrapping paper for all the
good girls and boys around the world. Please remember to thank Mr.
McGaughey and Mrs. LeMesurier for helping you to do such a good job.

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Happy New Year– January Newsletter

January 2007 News: Mr. McGaughey’s Grade 2 Class

Social
Studies: Communities Here there and Everywhere
During January and
February, your child will be completing a study of our local community
(Midland, Simcoe County) and comparing it to other communities around the
world. We will be completing the unit from January 15 to the middle of
February.

The final project for this unit will be to complete a
travel journal and poster of an imaginary trip to a destination outside of
Canada. Upon completion of the project, each child will make a brief oral
presentation to the class about his or her chosen destination. We will be
celebrating the end of the unit with a party sampling foods and music from
our chosen destinations.

The bulk of the work for this project will
be completed in class but you can help with discussing possible travel
destinations with your child. If you have any travel brochures, books,
souvenirs or posters that you can loan the class for the duration of the
unit, we would appreciate it. If you are planning a family vacation
outside of Canada for March break, encourage your child to collect
brochures, postcards, newspaper clippings and flyers to prepare for your
travels.

Current Events
Your child will be starting to do
weekly current events presentations in class. He or she can choose an
article from a newspaper, magazine, webpage or television, then write a
brief summary using the 5 Ws—Who, What, When, Where, Why and How?
The
current events schedule will be the same as the sharing schedule before
Christmas.
Monday: Alexis, Colter, Jaden,
Tuesday: Rebecca Brendan,
Colton
Wednesday: Jared, Shaelyn, Carter, Danny
Thursday: Jordan
Sam, Chevy
Friday: Gage, Nicholas, Simon
Important days to remember
in our class
Monday: Poetry books back to school, Gym
Thursday: Gym.
Library—Bring your library book.
Friday: Poetry books go home.
Keep
up the good work with reading your weekly poems and songs with your
family. Repeated reading of familiar songs and poems helps readers to
develop fluency.

January 19: PD Day—No School:
January 16:
Scholastic Book Orders Due

Class Website:
http://par.scdsb.on.ca/classes/McGaughey

Math: Chapter 6 Place
Value

For the next few weeks, we are exploring numbers to 100. It
would be helpful if your child brought in a bag of pennies (up to 30) and
dimes (10) to keep in their desks to help them with their math lessons.

Wrapping
paper

We finished our wrapping paper project just in time for
Christmas. Pictures of all the wrapping paper is on our website. Santa
sent this letter to thank us for our hard work.

Dear Grade 2
Students at Parkview School:

Thank you for all your hard work on
the wrapping paper for my printing press. The elves scanned your pictures
and put your designs into the printing press. With your help, I had enough
wrapping paper for all the good girls and boys around the world. Please
remember to thank Mr. McGaughey and Mrs. LeMesurier for helping you to do
such a good job.

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Missing December posts

Here is a summary of the missing posts for December 2006.

December 8 Agenda Note

• There are several new additions to our Class Website:
http://par.scdsb.on.ca/classes/McGaughey

• Show and Share next week December 11-15 e… as in eat or elf

December 18-22 No Share and show this week

• Take your poetry book home—Bring it back Monday!

• Take your word search home to help you study for your spelling test.
You can leave it there.

• You all did a good job with your graphing project. Take it home to
show your parents, get it signed and bring it back.

• Notes: Ski Club, Gift Table, Museum

• December 12: Class Picture Retakes

• December 13: Last Day of Skills for Living program with Mrs. Cooper.
We will have our final celebration at 1:35 pm. Parents are welcome to
join us.

Posted by Mr. McGaughey at 2:41 PM

Categories:

Snow Day

It is a beautiful sunny, snowy day in Midland today. We played in the
snow for our daily physical activity.

Posted by Mr. McGaughey at 11:54 AM

Categories:

Matryoshka doll

Mrs. Lavin was supply teaching here yesterday. She was very interested
in our patterning unit and our wrapping paper patterns. Today, she
brought in a Russian Matryoshka Doll to show the class. It had many
patterns in it. There is a red Santa then a blue Mrs. Claus and it
repeats on and on. One has a hat and one doesn’t. The dolls all fit
nested inside of each other. There are 9 dolls in all.

Posted by Mr. McGaughey at 11:31 AM
Edited on: Friday, December 08, 2006 11:39 AM
Categories:

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Candy Cane Patterns

Santa was having a problem. His reindeer kept running away from the
barn. We made fence patterns out of candy canes to show how he could
make a fence to keep the reindeer inside. Here are our designs.

Alexis, Jody, Cheyenn

It’s an ABC pattern. It is made out of candy canes. It repeats two times.

Brendan and Stephen

Colton and Rebecca

Dayton and Jordan

It is an AB AB pattern. It goes up and down.

Gage, Noah and Colter

My pattern goes ABB ABB.

Jaden, Connor, and Harry

Our pattern was an AABB pattern.

Lara, Jordyn and Sydney

Nick, Danny and Jacob

Nick: My pattern goes AABB and it has up down, up down.

Dan: My pattern rule is AABB or right, right, left left. It is made out
of blueberry candy canes.

Sam, Carter and Alex

Carter: We used three Winnie the Pooh candy canes and we used nineteen
mint candy canes.

Shaelyn and Crystal

Two candy canes are up and two other ones are down. Our pattern is AABB.

Simon and Jared

Our pattern is an AB pattern. One candy cane is upside-up and one candy
cane is sideways.

Posted by Mr. McGaughey at 10:31 AM
Edited on: Friday, December 08, 2006 11:34 AM
Categories: Gallery, student work

Friday, December 01, 2006

December News

Important days to remember in our class.
Monday: Poetry books back to
school, Gym
Tuesday:
Wednesday: 1:30: Mrs. Cooper comes for the
Dragon Program
Thursday: Gym. Library—Bring your library book.
Friday:
Art Class, Poetry books go home.

Keep up the good work with reading your weekly poems and songs with your
family. Repeated reading of familiar songs and poems helps readers to
develop fluency.

December 12: Class Picture Retakes
December 13: Last Day of Skills
for Living program with Mrs. Cooper. We will have our final celebration
at 1:35 pm. Parents are welcome to join us.

Class Website: http://par.scdsb.on.ca/classes/McGaughey

Field Trip December 19

A major focus of Grade 2 Social Studies is learning about Traditions and
Celebrations around the world. On Tuesday December 19 we are going on a
field trip to the Huronia Museum for the Festival of Light programme. We
will learn about winter festivals and celebrations from around the
world. We will be walking to the museum at 9:00 and returning to the
school at about 12:00 pm. The $6.00 cost for this program is being
covered by the school, so there is no cost to the students.

We Got a Letter from Santa!

For many years, Santa has been asking Mr. McGaughey’s students to design
wrapping paper patterns. This project helps the children learn about art
design, 2 dimensional geometry and patterning in a fun and challenging
way. Throughout the month of December, we will be preparing and
designing the wrapping paper. You can help your child by looking for and
discussing patterns and geometrical designs in Christmas decorations,
clothing and advertisements.

Santa
North Pole
H0H 0H0
November 21, 2006

Dear Boys and Girls at Parkview Elementary School:

Greetings from the North Pole! November is almost over and the Advent
season is arriving, Mrs. Claus, the elves and I set up our Nativity
scene outside last evening and just as we finished the snow began to
fall gently. It was so beautiful!

As you know, December is a very busy month here at the North Pole! This
year we are making more presents than ever for good boys and girls. Each
of those presents needs to be wrapped up. Fortunately, we have a
computerized wrapping paper printer in our workshop. It will reproduce
patterns much more quickly than our old one and can even read images
from digital cameras! The elves and I would like your help in designing
some new geometric patterns to put in it. Will you help us out? Mr.
McGaughey’s students have made some beautiful wrapping paper designs for
us in the past.

The wrapping paper patterns must be repeated, incorporate
two-dimensional shapes, and include a transformation. Of course, the
pattern must be on a Christmas or winter theme. At the end, you can keep
the wrapping paper – all we need is a photograph and a written
description of it so that we can enter it into our printing machine!

The elves and I will be anxiously waiting for your response. Have fun
with your designs!

Love,

Santa

Posted by Mr. McGaughey at 9:04 AM
Edited on: Friday, December 01, 2006 9:05 AM
Categories: news, newsletters, upcoming

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How to Make a Drum

Materials:

Clear packing tape, decorations, an empty packing tape roll, yarn, a 30 cm stick, scissors, glue and paper.

materials

What to Do:

  1. Cover the top of the empty tape roll with 2 layers of tape. Don’t leave any holes. Make sure it is nice and tight. This will be your drum top.
  2. materials

  3. To make the drumstick, wind about 4 meters of yarn around the top of your stick. The yarn ball should be about 2 cm across. As you are winding, put some white glue on the yarn then keep winding. This will stick the yarn together.
  4. materials

  5. Do this 2 or 3 times. Your finished drumstick will look like this.
  6. materials

  7. To decorate the drum, you can wrap paper around it and attach glue, beads, stickers or other decorations.
  8. Enjoy your new drum.
  9. materials

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100th Day Pennies

By Ben, Jessa, Will and Breanna

On Friday February 11, it was the 100th day of school. We each brought
in pennies to do 100th day activities. Our group counted 37 dollars and
23 cents. We put them in groups of tens and ones. We have 23 cents left.
We are giving it to the food bank. We use 50 cents in a roll. It takes
two rolls for one dollar.Our group counted 37 dollars and 23 cents. We
put them in groups of tens and ones. We have 23 cents left. We are
giving it to the food bank. We use 50 cents in a roll. It takes two
rolls for one dollar.

We also did a penny experiment when we lined up pennies all the way to
Mrs. Enns’ office. She gave us a candy.

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We chatted with Sheila Copps!

Sheila Copps is a former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister. She now is a
columnist for the Sun Newspapers and hosts web chats on canoe.ca at http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/SheilaCopps/ .

Today she hosted a chat about why Canada is a GREAT COUNTRY.

Our class sent her this message:

Dear Mrs. Copps:
My grade 4 students would like to know if you
would consider running for Prime Minister again. As Prime Minister, what
would you do to keep Canada great?
Sincerely,
Mr. McGaughey’s
Grade 4 Class, Midland, Ontario.

Here was her reply:

Sheila:
I thank the teacher for the question. I myself was just in
a school yesterday in Ottawa and I suspect that if the students have
such a question it must be the result of a teacher who may dabble in
politics. The reason that I am not running for the Liberal leadership is
partly tied to my own family. I now have 4 grandchildren and the 1st was
born on Canada Day so I would like to enjoy more time with them and when
you are in politics it is literally a 24 hour a day job. If I were Prime
Minister, I think the biggest challenge that we face is to be inspired
and to continue to inspire about our country. I see many Canadians who
have a strong attachment to their province or their regions but I fear
the Canadian identity is becoming diminished in the constant bickering
between regions and provinces. Going back to an earlier e-mail, we have
an incredible country and perhaps because we have so few problems we
tend to pick fights with each other. In the long term, the Prime
Minister needs to build and promote a common identity. That does not
mean disavowing regional differences but it does mean that we need to
focus on some common goals and I think one of those goals should be
creating a society where every person, regardless of economic
beginnings, is empowered to succeed. That’s a pretty big task for a
grade 4 class but it basically means having a country where we get rid
of all the bullies. I hope your class has a wonderful summer and I hope
your teacher has a well-deserved rest!

Sheila When I was in Grade 4 I had a very tough year because I
skipped Grade 3. I was extremely stressed because I didn’t know how to
multiply or divide and my teacher made me stay in almost every recess to
practice my multiplication tables. She said that if I did not complete
the work I would have to skip the class picnic. So I thought Grade 4 was
a very tough year but then I had a great summer and ended up with some
wonderful teachers who didn’t worry so much about my poor mathematical
skills. I think in Grade 4, if I remember correctly, I was playing
baseball in a neighbourhood team for the summer and we absolutely loved
it. It started my love of sport which has continued to this day. I hope
you are all getting a chance to watch the World Cup and cheer for your
favourite team and also to play some soccer yourself: it’s good for you!

You can read the whole transcript of her web chat here. 

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Teddy Bear’s Picnic

On June 27, the school had a Teddy Bear’s Picnic. Here is a picture of
our class enjoying our picnic with our stufffed friends.

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