As any teacher knows, October to many kids = one thing, HALLOWEEN! As the month goes on, anticipation builds and the kids get more and more excited about costumes and candy and less and less focused on what you are trying to teach. These past few weeks I have been tying pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns, and anything Halloween-y into our lessons to help focus all of that excitement into learning!
With so many Science, Engineering, Art, and Math activities, it has been Pumpkin Mania in our classroom!
We read 5 Little Pumpkins
(click the cover to get the book)
and wrote our own counting book using Bingo Dotters! We love these.
Some students made 5 little pumpkins just like the book
Some made a few more
and some made a LOT more!
In art we made our own paper jack-o-lanterns
During "science Friday" we always have STEAM workstations after our science experiment. Last week, I put out a bag of Pumpkin Spice marshmallows, a box of toothpicks, and gave my little engineers the opportunity to let their imaginations run wild!
It always amazes me the things they come up with when given only a few directions:
- "Don't put these in your mouth, they have germs from people's hands."
- "Be very careful with the toothpicks, they are sharp."
-"Create any kind of structure you want."
Yup, I think that pretty much covers my directions ;)
We described the outside of our small baking pumpkin, determined if pumpkins sink or float, and then carved out the pulp and seeds to describe what was inside.
We read about the life cycle of a pumpkin
(click the cover to get the book)
made life cycle bracelets (white for the seed, yellow for the flower, green for the green pumpkin, and orange for the orange pumpkin)
and filled our small pumpkin up with dirt, replaced a few of it's seeds, and placed it in the window in hopes that our own pumpkin plant would grow!
We practiced voting and comparing more and less this week by deciding how our classroom jack-o-lantern should look
And used our 5 senses to try all sorts of yummy pumpkin flavored treats (inspired by The First Grade Parade)
Not the prettiest graph I have every made but the kids got the basic concept lol
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