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!

Our Trip to the Fire Station

It sure was fabulous being able to talk to you all at parent teacher conferences!  I am so happy to be back in the swing of things; and finally making this first blog post makes me feel like I am back in action! :)

We are super busy learning a lot of new things.  We are finishing up a unit on the season of Fall.  We will be doing pumpkin activities this upcoming week.  I can't wait until we count how many seeds are in a pumpkin.  Will our pumpkin float or sink?  :)  In math we are beginning to focus on writing and recognizing numbers 5-10.  Next week we will be beginning learning about graphs and continuing to practice Tally Marks.  Our new sight words so far are see, on, can, to.  Book-It has begun.  It is so very important to read to your child as much as you can.  Have them point out the high frequency words we've been working on, as well as try to blend simple consonant-vowel-consonant words you come across.  :)

October is fire safety month.  We have been learning about fire safety.  We took a trip to the fire station.  It was a fabulous tour and the kids learned a lot!  Their homework was to go home and tell you to change the batteries in your smoke alarm.  I am curious if they did it! :)

Getting ready to watch the firemen shoot water from the hose.

 It was SO EXCITING!!  Look at our faces!

We ended up getting a little wet! :)

We learned about fire safety.  Do you have a family meeting spot outside?  Stop-Drop-Roll!

Firemen aren't scary!  They are there to help us.

We saw all of the things on the firetruck!

Look how big the wheel on the firetruck is!!!

If there is an accident and you are hurt,  you might be put on this board to stabilize your body in order to transport you safely to hospital.  This little guy was so brave!

A tour of the truck!  One of these trucks cost more than a million dollars!

They had to pull this to a fire by hand in the 1920's to help put out the fire.  Water and baking soda were mixed in here!  This was actually used in Colona!

We are SOOOO cute in our fire hats!!!!!

Thank you so much to the Colona firemen... and all firemen!  We got a FABULOUS tour!!!!  Thanks for stopping by the blog!  Until next time!