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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Amazing Class

This post is purely to brag about the amazing kids I teach. First of all, we are only into the fifth week of our spelling program and already everyone is demonstrating so much improvement in their reading and writing. All your hard work definitely shows!

 

WAY-TO-GO Division 4!!!!!!!

 

Every week, the students are given several ideas for extra spelling help at home. One of the suggestions is to come up with their own creative and fun way to practise their words. Two of my lovely little leaders in grade two have surpassed my expectations the last two weeks and have come up with the coolest projects! The classroom has definitely been filled with many oooohhhhs and aaaahhhhhs! You can see their amazing work below.

 

 

Some "sweet spelling" cookies by the lovely Amy!

Amy also came up with the idea for "spicy spelling" and used white glue to write each of the spelling words on construction paper.

Then she sprinkled the glue with some delicious smelling spices. Unfortunately, my camera was not at school that day so I was unable to take a photo.

 

A spooky spelling graveyard and a spelling mobile by the sweet Alexis!

 

 

Wow! What creative ways to practise our words!

 

We wrapped-up our pumpkin study today by writing a pumpkin diamante poem. A diamante poem is a poem in the shape of a diamond. Each line uses specific types of words, like adjectives. It does not have to rhyme. After we completed our poem, we used chalk pastels to create these pumpkin patch scenes.

 

 

Can you say

AH-MAZ-ING!!!!

They are all so pretty!

 BEAUTIFUL!!!!

 

 

 

Have a great weekend everyone!

-Mrs. Singh

 

The Great Pumpkin Investigation

Today was all about pumpkins, pumpkins, and more pumpkins!

To start our pumpkin activities off, we read the story It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall. We learned all about how a pumpkin starts off as a tiny seed, grows into a sprout, and then into a vine type plant. Soon a brightly coloured flower appears and after awhile a tiny green pumpkin.The little green pumpkin gets bigger and bigger and soon becomes a fully grown orange pumpkin. That's how a pumpkin grows!

 

After our story and group discussion, the students demonstrated what they had learned by creating the cutest 3-dimensional pumpkin life cycle craftivity. This is one amazing class because every single one of their projects turned out awesome. Here are a few examples:

 

 

After recess, we worked on some Pumpkin Math / Science activities with our big buddies in division 2. The students rotated through seven different stations which included everything from measuring the height and distance around, counting the lines on our pumpkins, weighing our pumpkins, predicting whether our pumpkins will sink or float, determining what kind of force will make our pumpkins move, and predicting/counting the seeds inside our pumpkins. We recorded all of our learning in our Pumpkin Investigation Notebooks. Here are some photos of all our hard work and pumpkin fun!

 

Counting the lines on our pumpkins

 

Measuring the distance around

 

Measuring the height

 

Sink or Float Experiment

 

Counting Seeds

 

Recording our results

 

I hope everyone had a fun day learning all about pumpkins!

 

-Mrs. Singh