Pumpkin Centers

 
     Yesterday we had our pumpkin centers.  Everyone brought in a small pumpkin to take to each center. We weighed our pumpkins, used cubes to measure height, used yarn to see how big around the pumpkin was, tested to see if our pumpkin would sink or float, and did a pumpkin glyph.  We had some moms come in and help.  We usually cut open our pumpkins and count the seeds, but we ran out of time!  I am going to do it on Tuesday with our class pumpkin instead.

Sink or Float- This class LOVES to do sink or float!

They were amazed that all the pumpkins floated!  They all thought the small ones would float, but they thought the larger pumpkins would sink.

Pumpkin Glyph Station

They were asked different questions relating to Halloween and they completed their glyph accordingly.

The completed glyph.  You can purchase it here.  We are going to analyze our data on Tuesday.  We had our fall festival today and no school on Monday!

How tall is my pumpkin?

They guessed how many cubes tall was their pumping.  Then they marked whether it was too short, too long, or just right.

Then they tested to see and measured it correctly.

First we guessed how much string it would take to go around our pumpkin.

Then we tested it to see if it was too long, too short, or too long.  Then we measured it again to see how much string it would take to go around the pumpkin.  I had several that guessed just right!

We also drew pictures of what are pumpkin looked like.

We guessed how much our pumpkin would weigh and then we weighed them on the scale.  We drew pictures of something that would weigh more than our pumpkin and something that would weigh less than our pumpkin.

I like to read this story before we do the centers, but I ended up reading it after the centers this year.  I love this story!  

We had so much fun this week!  

Candy Corn Math

    We did this activity yesterday.  They LOVED it!  I think part of the excitement was that we did it on the floor!  It's the little things! :)

Candy Corn Math Book- All of their answers are recorded inside their book.

Estimation-  The green jar is our estimation jar.  I put candy corn in the jar, and they estimated how many were in the jar.  We wrote them down before we counted the candy corn.

                                                                                    

There was a lot of discussion on how much candy corn was actually in the jar!

Recording their answers in their books.

We counted the candy corn.  There were 25 pieces in the jar.  I had one that estimated 23!  He got to eat a candy corn!

We guessed how many candy corns long a pencil is.  Our pencil is 7 candy corn pieces long.

We put 10 candy corns on the balance scale.  Then we guessed how many pennies our 10 candy corns weighed.  

We tasted a candy corn to see whether we liked it or not.  We graphed our answers.  Everyone liked candy corn!

We did the graph today because we ran out of time yesterday.  They thought it was really funny that we ran out of room on the graph! :0  Tomorrow I will put up pictures from the pumpkin centers that we did today! FUN! FUN! FUN!

Pumpkins!

     We had a great time today!  I love it when children love to learn!  They were so excited about learning how a pumpkin grows and that math can be so much fun.  They have been waiting forever to see what my green jar is for and today was the day.  I don't know what they are going to do tomorrow when they finally get to use their pencils and colored pencils!  It might be like the guest on Oprah when they are on her favorite things episode! LOL! :)

We did our number work yesterday, but we did our number 6 page today for morning work.

We did our Pig page for the letter P yesterday.  I love the upside down Pp! :)

Our popcorn word book for the week.  You can find it here.

Buccaneer of the Week- He brought the cutest book in yesterday!  It was a recording of him mom reading the book to him.  The class absolutely loved it! (Me too!)  I completely forgot to take a picture of the book!

We read From Seed to Pumpkin to learn about the life cycle of a pumpkin.  I actually had one that got a little ahead of me, and said that is just like an apple!  How smart is that?!

We painted the plates yesterday, so they would be dry for our activity today.  I forgot to take a picture of them painting!

Pumpkins grow from seeds.  We cut out the seeds first.

Second, a long green vine begins to grow.  We then cut out the vines.

Small yellow blossoms begin to bloom.  Third, we cut out the yellow blossoms.

The blossoms fall off and a small yellow or green piece of fruit begins to form.  We cut out small green pumpkins.

The yellow or green fruit begins to turn orange.  Now we are cutting our small orange pumpkins.

After all the pieces were cut out, we laid them out in order, taped it to string, and then taped to our pumpkin.  You can not really see in the picture, but they also gave their pumpkin a face.  Because after they take their pumpkins home, they carve a face into it.

I was going to put our Candy Corn Math in this post, but because it is so long, I am going to put it in another post.  I will try to get it up tonight, if not, there is always tomorrow! :)

Community Helpers

     We finally finished our Community Helper graph!  I have a super cute activity that I was going to do last week, then today, with our nursery rhyme but I forgot my candle, so we will do it tomorrow! :)  Our Bible activity is in pieces, so hopefully it will be assembled tomorrow so I can get that picture up.  I thought today I would put the rest of last weeks activities up and then start our pumpkins tomorrow.  I think today was the first normal day that we've had in October!  The whoosh season is already upon us!

This is not my favorite Community Helper book that I did with the class this year.  We were so pressed for time that I had to do something that could be done in a short amount of time.  I believe this is from Teacher Helper Oct/Nov 2004.

I posted the picture up earlier of Officer Buckle and Gloria that we read in class.  We did this page the day that the police officers visited our school.

We read Flashing Fire Engines which is a part of our Scholastic Curriculum.  It was really cool because we were able to see all the parts of the fire engine when they came to visit.

After reading the book and discussing what a firefighter does, we did this page.

We read Froggy Goes to the Doctor to help us learn what a doctor does and what happens to us when we go to the doctor.

We completed this page after reading the book and then made doctor bags in centers.

I love this book!  It has various letters from fairy tale characters that is just too cute!

We completed this page after learning what a mail carrier does.  In centers we made our own letters and put stamps on them.

We read Career Day as a review to what types of Community Helpers there are and what jobs they have.

I gave them four choices of what type Community Helper they wanted to be when they grew up.  It was funny because many of them wanted to be teachers, and I didn't have that as a choice.  Mainly, because I couldn't find teacher clip art! (Haha!)  We also did a survey and completed their own individual graph.

Our number from last week.  We actually did our number for this week today, but I did not take a picture.  

Just for fun- Walking stick bug that was found on the playground!

I had some other pictures that didn't take or maybe they did, but my camera will not even turn on now!  I'm so sad because I'm not going to be able to do the class book that I really wanted to do.  Oh well..next year!  Hopefully, I'll have better pictures now!