Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere

These last two weeks of October have certainly been a lot of fun! Last week, the students rotated through six different math and literacy pumpkin exploration stations with the help of some great parent volunteers.

Here are just a few photos from our pumpkin exploration day.
(If you are a teacher reading this post, the pumpkin exploration notebook can be found here.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week, we started our day with a little Halloween themed writing and art. First, the students brainstormed a list of their favourite Halloween costumes and creatures. Next, we chose one of our favourite creatures and created a drawing. Finally, we used our knowledge of letter sounds and sticky notes to label our diagrams. I think we did an amazing job.

 

 

 

This afternoon, we continued our Halloween / pumpkin fun with a walking field trip to our local pumpkin patch. Our field trip included a hayride to the pumpkin patch, a visit to a scary haunted house and a hay maze. We even had some time to enjoy a hot dog and hot chocolate after our busy day.

 

 

 

 

Can you believe this is just the start of Halloween week? There will be more Halloween Math and Literacy activities to come.

 

Happy Halloween!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Halloween

Wasn't October just so much fun??? I love all the writing, science and art activities that this month allows to really get students super excited about learning! I mean..... who doesn't want to learn about nouns using Halloween creatures or about adjectives to describe witches and frankenstein? Did I mention experimenting with pumpkins and learning to make predictions while searching for a candy bandit?

 

We wrapped up our month of fun with a Halloween celebration. This morning we divided up into 4 groups and rotated through a variety of Halloween centres which included some Math number games, sticker patterning, Frankenstein ABC order, and a cute jack-o-lantern craftivity.

 

 

Halloween Centre Rotations

 

 

 After recess we watched a wonderful movie called "The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin". This movie is about a very unique pumpkin and delivers a special message of tolerance and self-acceptance. Next, several students chose to visit a fun and exciting haunted house put together by some wonderful parents. Finally after lunch, the entire school participated in a Halloween parade to show off our amazing costumes.

 

Little Red Riding Hood and Medusa

 

So many amazing costumes!

Such a fun day! AND...the kids couldn't have been more excited or thrilled about the whole thing! 

 

I hear few more trick-or-treaters knocking at my front door. Time for me to hand out the last of the Halloween candy. Hope you are enjoying your night of trick-or-treats!

Have fun and be safe!

 

- Mrs. Singh

A Sneaky Visitor

Today started out just like any other day at school. We wrote our morning message in our planners, we talked a little bit about our expectations for Halloween and even completed a writing activity. This was just about the time when things got a little interesting. We decided to visit Mr. Mallinson's class to do a little Halloween poem writing but when we returned to class...

 

...the Candy Corn Bandit had been in our room and had taken all of our Halloween treats. In place of the treats was this little guy (see above), a note and some activity books with instructions for making predictions.

 

Where could he have taken our candy?

Was it in the library, the gym, in the school yard????

We quickly made our prediction and recorded them in the books the Candy Corn Bandit had left for us.

 

 

The only way to find out if our predictions were correct was to follow the clues left throughout the school by the Candy Corn Bandit himself.  The first clue had us turning our classroom upside down. We finally found the second clue taped to the bottom of a table. The second clue took us all the way to the gym, The third clue had us searching the playground and the fourth clue took us into the library. After reading the fifth and final clue, we predicted that the treats would be back in our class and when we got there.....

 

Yay! Success!

All our hard work paid off!

Our treats were safe and sound, ready for Halloween day!

 

Keep your eyes and ears opened. Halloween isn't over yet and you never know when he might come back for another visit or adventure.

 

 

 

Happy Halloween!

-Mrs. Singh



Fun With Frankenstein

We completed our Frankenstein adjective writing activity today.

Last week, each of the students used their imagination and creativity to make their own Frankenstein picture. The one and only rule was that he had to be interesting enough so that they could each come up with  a bunch of adjectives to describe him. The kids were super engaged and let me tell you, I could have heard a pin drop in the classroom, that's how hard they were working. After we finished our Frankenstein pictures everyone was given a piece of writing paper. The students came up with a number of descriptive sentences to describe their very own Frankenstein.

 

Today we revisited our Frankenstein writing. First we used our writers eyes to edit for appropriate upper and lower-case letters, fingers spaces between words, and appropriate punctuation. When our editing was complete, we used our highlighters to underline the adjectives in our sentences. Finally we partnered up with a classmate and read our work aloud. Overall, I think they did an amazing job!

 

 

 

In Math, we started our FACT FAMILY unit. A Math fact family is a group of addition and subtraction number sentences that are alike in some way. Each family has two addition facts that have the same addends and sum.Addends are the numbers you add together and the sum is the answer. If you switch the addends to the problem, the sum stays the same. The fact family will also have two related subtraction questions.

 

Here is an example:

 

2 + 3 = 5      and     3 + 2 = 5

 

5 - 2 = 3   and    5 - 3 = 2

 

I explained to the students that the largest number is like the Dad. He always goes at the end of the addition sentences after the equals sign. However, in the subtraction sentences the larger number or "Dad" always goes at the beginning. Here's a little visual I introduced to help them understand the concept a little easier.

 

 

After our group lesson, we went back to our desks and worked on our own individual fact family activity to demonstrate our understanding and learning.

 

 

We'll be continuing our Math fact family study over the next couple weeks so that we can really grasp this concept.

 

Speaking of families, we also discussed word families today. The grade ones are focusing on the short /u/ vowel pattern in their spelling this week. We brainstormed a huge list of short /u/ words and then sorted them into the different word family endings. Here's what we came up with:

 

 

Wow! What a lot of words! We'll keep adding to the list throughout the week.

 

Have a great evening!

 -Mrs. Singh