USA Ohio, Austinburg
Austinburg Elementary School, Ms. Gray's second graders

Continued... 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. Most of us live in houses. Some of us live on farms.

We are part of the Geneva Area City School District. There are five 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 have had a lot of snow this year. We had over 65 inches of snow by the end of January. It has also been very cold. We have already used all five of our snow days. If we have any more snow days, we will have to make them up in June.

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. Some of us live on farms. A farm is next door to our school. When we look out our classroom windows we can see the 12 horses and 8 goats in the pasture next to our building. Sometimes the horses and goats get through the fence and come over to our playground. 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.