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. Our school is only four
years old. Our room is next door
to the computer room. It is a
fantastic school. We have 23
children in our class - 13 girls
and 10 boys. We live in Ashtabula,
Austinburg, Geneva, Geneva-on-the
Lake, and Jefferson.
Cleveland is the closest large
city.
Austinburg is
named after Judge
Eliphalet Austin, one of
its founders. Austinburg is a
rural area. There is a horse farm
next door to our school. 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 the
neighboring city of Ashtabula. The
intricate wooden span stretches
613 feet above the flowing floor
of the Ashtabula River valley.
Geneva has the nation's shortest
covered bridge. It is 18 feet long
and just opened last year.
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 three
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: http://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 over 100 inches of
snow a year. We have already
had three snow days.
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 four 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. There is a computer
lab next to our room. We
visit the lab every day.
We have three pet gerbils in our
room. They are about 1 and half
years old. They like to run in
their wheel and watch us do our
work. Their names are Clover,
Sunflower, and Daisy.
Our
favorite school lunches are
popcorn chicken and Domino's
pizza. Pizza and peanut
butter and jelly uncrustables are
a lunch choice every day.
Popcorn chicken, chicken nuggets,
or chicken strips is a lunch
choice every Friday. Most of us
pack our lunches every day.
