A Little of This and a Little of That.....

My mind has been reeling since Friday's horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school.  I waver between feelings of sadness, horror and shock to feeling so grateful that our children are safe.  I say "our" because when your children are with me that is how I view them... a tiny bit mine for those moments of the day....to guide in the realm of academia; to put a bandaid on their ouchie, or give them a gentle hug when they are feeling sad;  to listen enthusiastically to their triumphs and delights.  These children are so full of LOVE and LIFE....even on the most challenging of days.  It is what makes my job the greatest in the world.  Please know that I will always do everything in my power to keep these wonderful little children safe. <3

This post is a mish-mash of things.  Photos taken and not yet shared.... in no particular order!  Enjoy!

Election!  We used our Ballot Box and voted on many things that week! 

What would you do if you were president?

Native Americans! :)

Our Village of TeePee's  

 Nursery Rhymes, Centers, and Reading Group Time!

We are so smart!  We are using our Balanced Literacy Mats to help us with our reading! :)

 Gingerbread Man and Center Fun! I have some pretty adorable kids in my class!:)

Eating our Gingerbread Men! :)

These were our favorite stories of the week!  :)

PUMPKIN DROP!!!

Ours had a tiny crack! Boo! :)  We really thought all of that toilet paper would work! :)


Please have a safe and wonderful holiday season!  Hug your babies tight! <3

Pumpkin Party!

Boy did we have fun with pumpkins this week!  There is so much learning to be had with this large, round, heavy, orange fruit. :)  We did SO much more too!  We made a scarecrow tree map.  We focused on writing what scarecrows "have", what they "can" do, and what they "are." The kids did great with this!  Now that we have gone through the entire alphabet I will be hitting it again one to two letters per week.  This week was letter "Pp" and next week we will be focusing in on letter "Hh."   We have been focusing on summarizing text using the key words "beginning, middle, end" which is part of the "balanced literacy" approach we have been adopting at our school.  Come learn about it at Pizza with the Principal on November 1st!  Mrs. Brasche is amazing and we are so lucky to have her at our school. <3  Now, onto some pictures!

This is the poem we have been learning!  I think they could say it in their sleep. :)

We summarized the poem by using this beginning, middle, end graphic organizer.  I gave the kiddos the option of drawing pictures or writing words.  Loved this!  (You can click on the photos to make them bigger.) :)

Would our pumpkin sink or float?  We were working on making our prediction.  

This is what our prediction paper looked like.  We had to circle what we thought it would do and then draw a picture of it.  At the end we had to write what it really did! :)

It floated!!!  We were excited! 

Really excited!  (How stinking cute!) 

Then, one of my smart students posed the question: Would the pumpkin stay on the bottom if you pushed it down?  Well, of course, we had to try it!  

And some of us got a little wet when the pumpkin came rushing back to the top with a SPLASH! :)  So, we had a great conversation about density and why the pumpkin would do that! :)

Had to just get a picture of our loverly pumpkin!  

We filled out this pumpkin observation paper. What our pumpkin looked like, what size it was, how many seeds we thought it had, how many seeds it did have (we'll get to that in a minute), what the seeds looked like, and what we thought the inside of the pumpkin would look like.  Whew. :) 

Then I cut it in half!  

And we started to take the seeds out!

There were a lot of seeds..... and I mean A LOT.  We counted, and counted, and counted.... all the way to.....
535!
We were tired at the end. :)

So we sat down and read a story (It was actually the second time we read it):

This story gives a wonderful description on how a pumpkin grows.  The illustrations are beautiful! 

We took what we learned in the story and made this cute flip book! :)  

PUMPKINS RULE! 

Until next time!