Save the Turkeys!!

We had a wonderful couple of weeks learning about Thanksgiving traditions and comparing the lives of pilgrims and Native Americans to our lives today. We read many wonderful books, both fiction and informational, and watched several educational videos about the daily life at Plimouth Plantation and for the Wampanoag people. Perhaps our favorite project from our Thanksgiving unit was the family project that you all completed! We read the book Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano and asked families to disguise your turkeys so that they would not get eaten for Thanksgiving dinner! All of the disguises were so wonderful, that I am sure the turkeys will be spared! Take a peek at our flock of turkeys!

A snowmobiling turkey.

A football playing turkey.

A princess turkey.

A princess turkey.

"Mr. Peacock"

A zombie ghost turkey.

A princess turkey with the chicken pox.

A gymnast turkey.

A gymnast turkey.

A snow-turkey!

A football playing turkey.

A turkey at the movies!

A chicken!

A colorful turkey.

A rainbow turkey.

A turkey with family pictures on it. 

A soldier turkey. 

A ballerina turkey.

I was so impressed by the hard work and effort that families put into this project. Thank you for taking the time to help your child complete this memorable activity!

I hope you all have a relaxing and enjoyable Thanksgiving break with your families. I am so thankful for the time I get to spend with your children, as well as for the daily support that we receive from all of you. Happy Thanksgiving!

Stuffed Animal Day!

We were so excited to earn our very first class-wide behavior celebration! All students work incredibly hard to "Be A STAR" throughout their day and earn stars individually and I recently started a class incentive called "Behavior Bingo" to encourage students to also work together as a group for positive behavior. 

Students must get ten in a row on our bingo board by making respectful choices as a group, including walking quietly in the hallways, being kind and helpful in specials, following directions quickly and more. We decide as a group what we are working towards and agreed that our first celebration would be Stuffed Animal Day. We had so much fun on Friday introducing our stuffies to each other, reading to them, eating lunch in the classroom with them and playing with them at free time. 

We are looking forward to our next class-wide celebration!

Pattern Block Puzzles

We are working hard to identify, compose and decompose shapes. To work on this skill, we have a new work station called Pattern Block Puzzles. We have to create the same shape three different ways with pattern blocks and then record our puzzles using paper pattern blocks. 

Fun-O-Ween!

We had so much fun at Fun-O-Ween! We got to wear our costumes and travel through various stations, including Ghost in the Graveyard, Spooky Stories, Spooky Musical Chairs, and more! Thank you to everyone who sent in the yummy ingredients for our Halloween Fruit Salad! Please enjoy these pictures of all of the fun!

Spooky Spiders!

The cutest little spiders you ever did see!

We loved learning about everyone's favorite arachnids during our Spider Week! We started off by deciding whether or not we were afraid of spiders. Surprisingly, most people claimed they are NOT afraid! We read an informational passage each day of the week using "close reading" techniques, focusing on important vocabulary words and highlighting the big ideas of the text. We also had a chance to sing some spider songs, write our own spider facts, and decide whether or not we thought a spider would make a good pet. Please enjoy these photos of our week.

One of the Itsy Bitsy Spiders practices reading with her spider hat and creepy finger!

Glittery Spider Webs!

We labeled the parts of a spider.

An informational text about spiders. 

I'm a Little Spider song that we learned. 

We read this book to learn the sight word "on."

We read this book about a sweet little spider who just wants to be someone's pet. 

Watch out, Moms and Dads! Lots of kids might be asking to add a spider to your family!

Spider facts. 

Spider Facts

Pumpkin Fun!

We had a blast learning about pumpkins the week before Halloween. We had a wonderful visit to the Parker Family Farm to kick off our unit, and then spent time investigating pumpkins and learning all about the life cycle of a pumpkin. 

Investigating how tall our pumpkins were.

How many links fit around the pumpkin?

Will the pumpkin float or sink?

 We read Pumpkin, Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington, and then sequenced the life cycle of a pumpkin. 

  We read the book How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara, and then estimated how many seeds our class pumpkin would have in it. We then brainstormed how we could count the seeds to figure out the answer. We decided to use ten frames and count by tens. 

 We had to count really high! Our small pumpkin had 362 seeds! Wow!

Fun At the Pumpkin Patch!

The chilly temperature didn't stop us from having a wonderful time at the Parker Family Farm learning all about pumpkins this afternoon! We started our day with an educational slide show about the life cycle of a pumpkin. We then toured some of the fields and got to feel and describe a variety of pumpkins. The yummiest part of the afternoon was when we got to taste different pumpkin foods, including pumpkin applesauce, roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin dip, and pumpkin cookies. I was so proud of all of the students for trying some new and different foods! We finished our trip with picking out our very own pumpkins to bring home. We will use these pumpkins at school for a day or two to do some investigations before they will be sent home. Thank you to the parent chaperones who helped this trip run so smoothly!