Pumpkins & Halloween

The lightbulbs are going off in room 17 & we've been doing SO much lately that's exciting and fun... I'll try to keep it semi-short & sweet! The kids had a sub on Monday and Thursday this week (Thursday I was at Franktown observing a math program we are interested in implementing for the Building Leadership Team) & I came back to TWO very sweet notes about how delightful and well-behaved this class is. I couldn't agree more! :)

We finished our STEM investigations of pumpkins by getting really messy! They were troopers :)

We counted the seeds in a pumpkin by groups of 10 and our pumpkin had 409!

We made spider webs with our wonderful volunteers (thank you to all of you who help us! The kids love their time with you & it allows them to get to do these extra things that I don't always have time for!) and then they wrote about spiders in their journals.

We got new highlighters for writing (with leftover donation money so thank you!)... and our writing is TAKING OFF!

We've been loving our Scholastic magazines! We lay on our bellies in a circle and it is one of my favorite times during the week. They always connect to what we've been learning and the kids make great connections.

We tasted pumpkin puree... and oh my gosh if you guys could've been a fly on the wall! HILARIOUS! I think our adjectives for our bubble map ended up being: yucky, orange, smooth, & smelly or similar to those!

We talked about how pumpkin looks like, smells like, & tastes like baby food. We like the sugar in pumpkin pie, bread, and muffins! ;)

Lastly, since our writing has improved so much this past month, we introduced "author's chair." They get to sit in my rocking chair and read their writing to the class and show the picture. Then the whole class celebrates with a round of applause for them! They love it.

Thank you to all of you who attended and/or donated items/time for our Halloween party! A huge thank you to our room mom who planned and organized it all!

Ask Your Child About:

-Phonological Awareness: ending sounds

-Phonics: Yy (y, yellow, /y/), Zz (z, zebra, /z/)

-Reading: Sequencing ALL of the events in the story

-Math: Decomposing teen numbers into 10 plus how many more and writing the equation PLUS the flip-flop equation!

-Science: Properties of matter- final week of pumpkin investigations!

-Writing: Making sure our sentences make sense and are complete

-Technology Lab: We go to tech on Thursdays- what games have you learned how to play? What skills do they help you practice?

Reminders:

-No School on Tuesday! (PD Day)

-Thanksgiving Feast is 11/15 - purchase your tickets through the blast!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend!

With SO much love,

Ms. Ham