Hi friends and followers! And, hello November! But, before we get carried away with pilgrims, turkeys, cornucopias, pumpkin pie, Charlie Brown and all things Thanksgiving - I want to share some of the highlights from my classroom during the week of Halloween. In two words, our week was "terrifying-ly terrific!"
To kick off our week, I made googly eye reading sticks for my firsties to use during their read-to-self and buddy reading time! If I had known that a popsicle stick, googly eye, and a little bit of hot glue would excite my students as much as it did last week, sheeesh, I would have done it weeks ago! Ha! I may just have to come up with another themed reading stick for Thanksgiving! Any ideas?!
Not only was it the week of Halloween, but our school was also celebrating Red Ribbon Week! Talk about b-u-s-y and FUN! Red Ribbon Week was punctuated by "Be Super, Be Healthy - Super Hero Day." How perfect for Halloween... especially for a team of first grade teachers who do not need much of a reason to dress up for a theme! Check out my SUPER team of awesome teachers!
Above: Pretty Super Heroes
{From left to right: Minnette, Ashley, Ann Elizabeth, Me, Haley, and Shelley}
// Photo credit: Haley //
Above: Strong Super Heroes
{From left to right: Minnette, Ashley, Ann Elizabeth, Me, Haley, and Shelley}
// Photo credit: Haley //
Didn't they all do an awesome job with their costumes? It's hard to tell the details of my shirt and skirt in these pictures, so I posted separate product pictures and links below. I actually wore this outfit to my Nerdy 30 birthday party in February...LOVE it!
Marvel Super Heroes Vintage T-shirt: I Heart Men in Uniform
Marvel Avengers Comic Book fabric skirt (made to order from Etsy by NerdAlertCreations)
Black Star Panythose from Party City
Once the students arrived, it was time to hit the ground running with all of our Spooky Fun Friday activities! As I was in the planning stages of Halloween week, I came across this AWESOME Pumpkin Mini-unit freebie by Nicole Ricca posted on TpT. This freebie includes so many fun activities related to pumpkins accompanied by book suggestions, lesson plans, and printables! What a gem this was to find! Thank you so much Mrs. Ricca for sharing such a thorough, fun, and FREE resource in your store! I am now one of your newest followers!! :-)
Before we started our Pumpkin Investigation from Mrs. Ricca's mini-unit (pgs. 8 - 11), I read "How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?" to my firsties. A few weeks ago I introduced a Counting Collections mini-math unit to my students following a district-wide math training and this book was actually mentioned by one of the training facilitators. Since we had already spent several days sharing our mathematical thinking and strategies used for counting collections of objects, my students really enjoyed seeing many of their ideas expressed and illustrated in this book.
Following the reading of the book, we engaged in a book discussion and students were able to share their thinking about the book and how the characters went about making predictions about the number seeds as well as the strategies they used for counting the seeds (i.e., counting by singles, 2s, 5s, and 10s). Again, I felt like this discussion had a little more depth due to our previous lessons on Counting Collections. Yay, they had been listening! As we concluded our book discussion, my firsties were excited to investigate their pumpkins and put their own counting strategies to use.
Each table was assigned a pumpkin and we used the Pumpkin Investigation page from the Pumpkin Mini-unit freebie by Nicole Ricca on TpT. You have to stop by her store and grab this freebie!
Below you will see the 5 different pumpkins we investigated. One of my super sweet room Moms donated all 5 pumpkins to our class... how generous what that! I would definitely recommend using small to medium sized pumpkins - they are much easier to cut open and just the right size for this age group. This picture collage shows several of the tables working together to deseed the pumpkins and conduct their investigation about pumpkin size, height, characteristics (i.e.,. float vs. sink; lines/ridges), and total seed count. This was all very time consuming and a little messy, but we had an absolute blast! Some students even shared that they had never deseeded or carved a pumpkin...and this was their very FIRST time! What a special memory for them to make! Loved it!
Here's a snapshot taken from the float vs. sink part of our pumpkin investigation. For the record, each of the pumpkins floated!
The "investigation" of our pumpkins will not stop just because Halloween is over. On Monday, we placed the pumpkins in our classroom garden bed and will watch the pumpkins decompose and turn into a rich fertilizer for the Swiss chard plants we are growing and harvesting. To say that the kiddos are really pumped about watching this process would be an understatement! I am so excited and proud of how much interest they are showing in pretty much EVERYTHING! #luckyteacher
Thanks again for stopping by! Have a great week and hello November!
// Photo courtesy of Free Internet Pictures //
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