Seed, sprout, pumpkin, pie

Pumpkin life cycle

So many seeds inside! 

My pumpkin friend!

 Pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, and everything pumpkin in the food stores (pumpkin cheerios!) - time to learn about the little seeds behind the fall pumpkin craze. We enjoyed several texts depicting the life cycle of pumpkins, independently read about it on a non fiction Starfall book, sequenced pictures of the seed to pumpkin stages, learned how seeds can travel with the help of wind, animals, and birds, and even carved a pumpkin to examine the seeds inside.

All the stages of a pumpkin

Of course this experience provided an opportunity to integrate with writing. Everyone wrote the steps of carving a pumpkin as we were carving it, using transitional words of First, Next, Then, and Last. Finally, everyone had a chance to touch the goo and slippery seeds - fun!

Pumpkins on laptops!

Decorate a pumpkin

Slippery!

Yuck!

We like it!

Eww!

Do you dare

Wow, look!

We had a visit from Sergeant Manning this week as well. He shared some safety tips for costumes and visibility for anyone going out in the dark on Halloween.

Thanks for the tips!

After reading Jeb Scarecrow, we made little popsicle stick scarecrows as a follow up. They went along nicely with our scarecrow poem too. 

Singing the poem

Making the scarecrow

Lots of mini scarecrows

I like this little scarecrow!

It matches the poem

The math focus this week has been on adding in any order (commutative property), recognizing that counting on from the largest number is most efficient. They have been using dice and number cards to form an equation and then discussing with their partners the best  order to record it in their math notebooks.

Adding with the number line

Our math notebooks

Making equations to record

Let's record it this way...

Reviewing time to the hour

 Everyone has loved our rap song for learning doubles facts! We are practicing in advance, knowing that this will be introduced very soon!

Practicing facts to 10

Completing halves of a design

It's exciting to see the progress in phonics skills as the kids are becoming more proficient at making words by putting letters together. The sounding out and blending during pocket chart center has also been very effective. Working with partners in our PALS routine has been a fun way to practice sounds and words too.
                                                           

Taking turns in PALS

Nice job!

Decode and find the picture

Spider Cider words

 Reading aloud to peers is also a favorite and provides great practice as well.

Nice reading!

Great expression!

We read these!

We began Light Energy in science and played a fun guessing game to identify the sources of light, both natural and man-made.

You see this at night...

It can warm you up...

This use tis to see in the dark

This has a screen that glows

This week we wished a Happy Birthday to Sofia- have a wonderful birthday weekend! 

This coming Thursday, Scholastic sets up a Book Fair in the front hall. We will be visiting at 9:15. Your child can make a wish list for you to see and then choose a book another day, or choose a book on Thursday  to purchase right then, if you wish to participate.

 Enjoy the sunshine,
Mrs. Dagley