Thanks to Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting this weekly linky party!
I have to admit that I am happy to have October all wrapped up. It seems like it flew by this year! It's a little late, but here's a recap of our Pumpkin Week. It was great fun!
I love this book, by Jill Esbaum, called Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin, Pie. It has beautiful pictures and interesting pumpkin facts, including what the ridges of a pumpkin indicate. My students were fascinated by the details.
Here we are gently tugging at the top to feel the connection between the stem and the stringy seed connections inside. We chose a large, medium and small pumpkin from our collection of 9 (yes, NINE) pumpkins that the kids brought in for our study.
Finally, to wrap up our Pumpkin Week, we made Pumpkin Pie in a Cup. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of pumpkin, but this was pretty good. The kids thought it was excellent. They asked for seconds.
I have to admit something. After a full day of Pumpkin EVERYTHING, my nerves were a little frazzled. A student gave me this cute sign a few years ago. I keep it right above my computer as a reminder to keep calm. It was certainly appropriate for this day. Ha! Keep Calm and Pumpkin On! We go the extra mile to make learning especially fun for our students, don't we? At the end of the day, it's very gratifying to send them home with exciting stories to tell about their day. For me, it's great to go home to the peace and quiet to recharge for the next day.
We had a fun field trip to a local science themed museum. The children participated in MORE pumpkin activities, including a fun STEM tower-building challenge. They even tasted pumpkin muffins (which weren't bad)!
This week, we've been studying the moon and sun. Today, we pulled in the COWS (Computers on Wheels and did some reading on PebbleGo.com. I really like this site for kid-friendly research. Students worked in pairs to read about the phases of the moon, and then record the names on a graphic organizer.
Do I have next week's plans finished? No. Started? Not even!
It's time to take down the scarecrow glyphs, but they turned out so cute, I decided to keep them up until we have our next work ready to display in the hallway.
I'll be working next week's plans this weekend. We have a strange week, this next week, because we're off on Wednesday to celebrate Veterans Day. We usually have PD on Veterans Day while the children have the day off, but our school board decided to make it a holiday for all staff this year! So, it will be like 2 two-day weeks for us!
I'll be working on developing a Veterans Day patriotic craft to go along with America's White Table by Margot Theis Raven. It details the symbolism of the White Table Ceremony, which began during the time of the Vietnam War. The White Table Ceremony is a tradition to honor those missing in action or held as prisoners of war. I'll use it to teach inference and finding deeper meaning in texts.
No comments: