We had a fun week all about pumpkins!
On Monday we did our weekend journals and practiced writing a sentence to go with our pictures. We talked a lot about beginning sounds, and tried writing what we heard. Mrs. Jacobs came and did a lesson about sorting our names based on if they had an a or an e in them... or neither. The students did great cutting, sorting, and gluing. We also took this week to review all of our letters and sounds we have learned so far. We started out pumpkin week off by talking about what a pumpkin looks like, and describing it's attributes. Then, we estimated how many lines we thought were on it, and counting to see if we were close.
On Monday we did our weekend journals and practiced writing a sentence to go with our pictures. We talked a lot about beginning sounds, and tried writing what we heard. Mrs. Jacobs came and did a lesson about sorting our names based on if they had an a or an e in them... or neither. The students did great cutting, sorting, and gluing. We also took this week to review all of our letters and sounds we have learned so far. We started out pumpkin week off by talking about what a pumpkin looks like, and describing it's attributes. Then, we estimated how many lines we thought were on it, and counting to see if we were close.
On Tuesday we got excited about the Cubs starting the World Series! We also continued to sing "Go Cubs Go" as our clean-up song all week. Our pumpkin investigation continued with centers and measurement. Our pumpkin centers this week included making pumpkin dough out of canned pumpkin, corn starch, and cinnamon. It smelled great and was wonderfully mushy and messy! Additionally, we took a closer look at all different types of pumpkins and gourds, and painted what we saw. We also snuck in some Jolly Phonics practice by building with Legos objects that started with our letters/sounds. Then, we talked about how we can measure a pumpkin. We measured the length with unifix cubes, recorded, and then graphed our results.
On Wednesday we continued with our pumpkin investigation centers, and did a pumpkin experiment. Would a pumpkin sink or float? We voted and tallied our predictions, and then tried it out. We couldn't believe a pumpkin could float! We also continued our Jolly Phonics review by doing an A vs. E sort.
On Thursday we did more pumpkin centers, and had time for choice centers including building, math on the iPads, play dough, and witche's brew in the Dramatic Play center. Lastly, we read The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything, by Linda Williams. We practiced as a class going over the different parts of the story, and drawing it out. We will continue this by retelling with a partner.
On Friday we made a scarecrow glyph with our buddies which was great practice in counting, cutting, gluing, and direction following, Then, we did a math witche's brew. I had a "cauldron" full of different "ingredients", and the students had to estimate how many of each ingredient I had in my potion bottles (spiders, eyeballs, teeth, etc.). Once we estimated, we counted and recorded the results.
This week we will celebrate Halloween, wrap up our pumpkin investigation, and start our mini election unit. We will be focusing on what it means to be a community leader, and picking a book character president: No David, Pete the Cat, or Lily from Lily's Purple Plastic Purse. It will be very age-appropriate and not involve talk of our current candidates!
Looking forward to celebrating Halloween as a class :)
Looking forward to celebrating Halloween as a class :)