Pumpkins & Mummies

    

     Our poem for this week was Five Little Pumpkins.  The students love this poem and would break out chanting the poem all on their own at times during the day.  They loved creating their own pumpkins for our fence.

  

   

     We are learning to use our sounds to spell words.  The best place to start with this skill is in labeling.  Here is a picture of our class labeling a pumpkin together.

During our lessons on the life cycle of a pumpkin, our class read the book, Pumpkin Jack. 

     This is a book about a boy who puts his pumpkin out in the garden.  Over the seasons, he watches the pumpkin change.  In the Spring, he finds that Pumpkin Jack has rotted and produced lots of other new pumpkins.

     After reading the story, the students decided that they wanted to observe what our pumpkin would do over time.  We already had a plastic box full of dirt where we had planted seeds.  So we put our Pumpkin Jack in the box and covered it with a lid so it wouldn't stink in our classroom.   We predicted that over time our pumpkin would rot.  We have been recording our observations each day of what Pumpkin Jack looks like.

      This fun science activity came from Mrs. Jump's blog.  Our class also used her ideas for the book, Where's My Mummy?  

    Our class is working on naming characters and their characteristics in books.  This was a good book to practice this particular skill.  We focused on Baby Mummy and how he looks, what he does and how he feels.

    
     Together we completed a chart with the frame, "When I'm scared, my mommy _____."  This helped us make connections to complete our own frame on our paper.  The best part was making our own Baby Mummy.

     On Friday we wrote our first book!  We titled our book, I See.  While writing the books, our authors practiced creating text, sounding out words, locating words in the room and copying them for their story, letter formation and illustrations.  They are very proud of their books, and I am proud of the work they accomplished on the first book they authored and illustrated. 

     In math, we are working on ordering numbers.  When given 4 different numbers, the child should be able to put them in order from the smallest to largest number.  

      In class, we played a card game, called Compare or Snap,  which you can easily play at home.  Use number cards 0 through 10.  Shuffle the cards, place them face down.  Each person turns the top card over and compares the numbers on his/her cards to see which number is greater and which number is less.  Whoever has the greater number says, "snap" and gets to have both cards.

     Next week, we will be talking about scarecrows!