Pumpkin Perfection

 That was how I felt this week - it was perfection. I loved weaving a common theme into all of our learning activities and incorporating all of the five senses.  I don't know if I can keep it up - but I'm gonna try! We had so much fun, learned a lot,and ate yummy pumpkin-flavored foods. With a strong pumpkin theme, we focused a lot on reviewing the color words, capitalizing the first letter of sentences, and asking questions to find out more.  We brought all of those targets together in our whole group writing this week.  I had a pumpkin hiding each day and and the students had to ask about its size (big and little were two of our new sight words) and its color.  I wrote the questions on the board for a visual model and reminder.

 We noticed how the "i" in the word "is" looked different than we normally see it on our sight word flash cards. Since "is" was the first word of the question, the 'i' was capitalized.  We also talked about the different punctuation at the end of the question. The students helped me spell each color word as I wrote it down, singing the color songs to help us remember.  The color words can be harder to remember since we don't see them as frequently in our reading group texts.  (Although this week, I made sure to find an emergent reader that reviewed all the color words, as you might have noticed in their reading assignment).

 Once the students got the answers they needed, I revealed the mystery pumpkins and we wrote about them on the anchor chart.  I made sure to use the other new sight word, 'my' in the sentences, showing how it was sometimes capitalized and sometimes not. 

    Our sight word workshops, during which we focus exclusively on the three new sight words of the week, were mostly the same as past weeks, with the exception of the Halloween manipulatives which replaced the jewels.

We learned new pumpkin poems and songs this week which the children loved.  We recited Five Little Pumpkins each day using fun hand motions. Then we sang the nursery rhyme, Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater. We wrapped up with the same activity from last week - except instead of apple sounds, it was pumpkin sounds. We recited the chant, a student pulled out a pumpkin letter, we made its sound. Once three letters had been pulled, we rearranged the letters to try to make a word. The students are discovering how important the vowels are in making words. 

Our pumpkin theme carried over into our journal writing as well. On Monday, the students wrote about the pumpkins that sat on their front porches (using the new sight words, "My pumpkin is big and orange." for example). On Tuesday, the students were each given a card with a word written on it. There were size words (big/little), the joining word - 'and,' and various color words. They had to get into teams of three to create their own unique pumpkin.

  They placed them into the sentence on the board, then they wrote about and drew their pumpkins in their journals. 

The page on the left is the one I'm talking about. Emma's group had a big and pink pumpkin.

The right page of Emma's journal (above) shows what the kids did for their final journal writing this week.  The students first heard the story of Spookley the Square Pumpkin.  The pumpkin is made fun of for his odd shape until he saves the day, then all the other pumpkins (and the farmer) celebrate him - so basically he's the Rudolph of pumpkins. Anyway, the farmer plants Spookley's seeds and the next fall, all kinds of different-shaped pumpkins of various colors pop up. After hearing the story, they took turns reaching into the mystery box and pulling out a shape. They took it back to their journals and turned it into a pumpkin.  

 Now for ELA (English and Language Arts) centers.

Pumpkin Pie "Cloud Dough" - that turned out more like pumpkin dirt - but the kids still loved it.

Making Pumpkin Parts Book for their book buckets in the science center

 And our math workshops,.... (Students are randomly-ish placed in new groups at the beginning of each week and go to one workshop each day).

Roll two dice, add them together, cover it up

Roll the dice, pick that many pumpkins from the patch and place into ten frame.  Once a student has a full ten, they trade them in for a pumpkin pie card.

Counting out pumpkin seeds....

and ordering the numbers to 20 to solve the picture puzzles...

and ordering the numbers to ten to put the pumpkin sequence together. 

The fourth workshop was play-dough shapes. No pumpkin theme. Womp. Womp. Should have made pumpkin play dough.

 Now let's talk about science and snacks and wrap this thing up. I brought mini-pumpkins in on Monday. The kids were pretty quick to point out they were actually oranges. We discussed what a pumpkin looks like on the outside and how the oranges didn't have the ridges/lines that pumpkins have.

 The next day, our class Grandma (my mom) made us pumpkin doughnut holes, rolled in cinnamon sugar.

On Wednesday, I cut into a small pumpkin so we could see what the inside looks like.

 And Grandma made us pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

 Mrs. Taylor, not to be outdone by Grandma, took the same pumpkin I cut in half and made it into soup that night, which went along just perfectly with our story the next day.  We had our first guest reader, my daughter, Harper, read us the book, "Pumpkin Soup." Then the students each got to have a taste of the soup! Surprisingly, the majority of them liked it.

We finished up the week by making a cute little pumpkin craft that showed the life cycle of pumpkins and snacking on Grandma's Pumpkin Dream Bars with cream cheese frosting, Yum.

Here's the best of the rest. Have your child wear black on Monday (even though Red Ribbon week says to wear red). This is our last color day for the rest of the year!