Roberta Gray
Austinburg Elementary
Austinburg, Ohio, USA
Dear Friends, We are a class of second
graders at Austinburg Ele. in Austinburg, Ohio (41.46N. 80.51W.).
Austinburg is a Pre-K-6 building with about 350 students. Our school is
the multi-handicapped building for our school system, Geneva Area City
Schools. We even have an elevator in our building for students who use
wheelchairs and walkers. We have 26 children in our class -
12 girls and 14 boys. We live in Austinburg, Geneva,
Geneva-on-the Lake, Jefferson,
and Ashtabula. Cleveland is the closest large city.
Austinburg is named after one
of its founders, Judge Eliphalet Austin. Austinburg is a rural area.
There is a horse farm next door to our school. When we look out our
classroom windows we can often see horses in the pasture next to our
classroom. Sometimes the horses get through the fence and come over to
our playground. Every year we have Austinburg
Country Days at the beginning of September. We have a parade, horseshoe
pitching, vegetable and sunflower contests, antique car show, antique
engine and tractor show, a pet show, garden tractor pulls, a slow bike
race, and country music.
In Austinburg you will find the
second longest single-span Covered Bridge in Ashtabula County.
This 156 foot bridge was built over Grand River in 1867. It is
believed to be the oldest of the County's bridges. It was
renovated in 2003 -2004 and reopened to traffic in the spring of 2004.
The nation's longest covered bridge is located in Ashtabula. The
intricate wooden span stretches 613 feet above the flowing floor of the
Ashtabula River valley. We have many covered bridges in our
county and even have a Covered Bridge Festival in October.
We are part of the Geneva Area
City School District. There are four elementaries, one junior high and
one high school in the Geneva Area City School District. You may
find out more about Geneva Area City Schools at this web site: h ttp://www.genevaschools.org/ Austinburg is about 10 miles
from Lake Erie. In the summer we like to go swimming, boating and
fishing in Lake Erie. We also like to visit the Strip at Geneva
on the
Lake where we can go on rides at the Adventure Zone and Erie View
Amusement Park, slide down the giant slide at Wild Water Works, play
games at Woody's World Games Arcade and Edwin's Games Arcade, and eat
lots of great food at Eddie's Grill and Dairy Queen, Mary's
Kitchen,
Capo's Pizza, Bev's Dairyland, and Madsen's Donuts. We also like
to go to the State Park at Geneva on the Lake to swim in the lake, play
on the beach, eat picnic lunches, and hike in the woods.
In the fall we rake leaves,
pick apples and grapes, and make jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. Ohio is
the third largest wine producing state after California and New
York. Most of Ohio's vineyards are along Lake Erie.
Every year
Geneva has the Grape Jamboree the last week-end of September.
It is two days of parades, rides, contests, and lots of fun! There are
lots of grapes and things made from grapes. You can even stomp on
grapes to make grape juice.
In the winter we like to build
snowmen and snow forts, slide down hills on our sleds, have snowball
contests and play in the snow. We live in the primary snow belt
which generally gets 60 - 100 inches of snow a year. So far we
have had three snow days. Two were because of high winds and one was
due
to ice.
In the Spring it starts to
get warm and everything starts to grow again. We fly kites and plant
our gardens. It is a fun time of the year. We have lots
of trees and woods. We have a woods behind our school. We have
many wild animals in our area. Some of them are rabbits,
raccoons,
skunks, black snakes, groundhogs, sea gulls, cardinals, goldfinches,
blue jays, wrens, owls, hawks, herons, crows, sparrows, robins,
possums,
deer, wild turkeys, Canadian geese, quails, moles, mice, foxes,
muskrats,
and rats.
Our favorite school activities
are reading, math, science, and working on computers. We have five
computers in our room. Each of them is connected to the Internet. We
work on various programs and/or projects on the computers every day.
We have a white and
gray pet gerbil named Sugar and a black pet
gerbil
named Spice. They like to run in
their wheel and watch us do our work. Sometimes we let them run in
their exercise balls in our room.
Our favorite lunches are pizza
and chicken nuggets. Pizza is one of our lunch choices every
day. Chicken nuggets is a lunch choice every Friday. Please visit our classroom's
web site to learn more about us:
http://www.genevaschools.org/austinbg/class/gray/ Mrs. Gray’s Second Grade Austinburg Elementary 3030 St. Rt. 307 W. Austinburg, Ohio, 44010 roberta.gray@neomin.org
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