Hey, ya'll! Where the heck has the time gone?! I feel like just yesterday it was the first day of school! It's hard to believe the first half of the school year is coming to close. I feel so lucky to have such a sweet and hard working class. They make each day fun, and I have a feelin' that's why this year has zoomed right on by!
Enough digressing... I hope you and your loved ones had a Happy Halloween! We have been so busy the past few weeks wrapping up our studies on owls, bats, spiders, and pumpkins. Like most of you, I'm sure, we celebrated Halloween by having ourselves a little pumpkin investigation. My cuties did such an amazing job counting out their seeds and working together to find the right strategy to use. None of my groups ended up counting the same way, and I loved that! It made for such great discussion at the end of the activity.
Needless to say, they LOVED the activity and certainly did not mind getting their hands all messy!
Another fun activity we completed for Halloween, was pumpkin book reports. For this project, I let each student choose one book from the class library. At home, they had to illustrate or draw (depending on their level) the elements of the story. Then, they got to create the main character using a pumpkin. The final products were TOO CUTE ya'll. Just take a look below.
We had the whole gang in class: Duck, Sam I Am, The Stinky Cheese Man, Marley, The Gym Teacher from the Black Lagoon, and so much more!
When I sent home the instructions for the project, I stressed the importance of having the students do the brunt of the work. While I acknowledge that parents are needed to complete some more dangerous difficult activities {hot gluing, cutting, etc}, I wanted to make sure my students got to be the creative directors, and let me tell you....they sure did. I have never seen my students more proud of their work than when they presented their pumpkins to the class...and I have probably never been more proud as their teacher.
You could definitely say it was a win/win!
Besides being totally wrapped up in the chaos of planning, teaching, and tracking data (yuck!), I have had several sweet surprises lately that have helped remind me of the purpose of Thanksgiving. One of those sweet little surprises was this precious wreath:
Ok, ignore the filthy dry erase circles. Those puppies only get a good wipe down every Friday {if I'm lucky} and we sure use them to death! Anyway, how stinkin' cute is that wreath!? A precious parent of one of my students last year made it for me for NO.GOOD.REASON. Just to be nice. Can you believe that? If that doesn't make you thankful I don't know what will. Thank heavens for kind people!
Now that October has come to a close we are diving head first into all things Thanksgiving! One of my absolute most favorite times of year! To prep ourselves for the month ahead, I've
This packet is filled with 10 math, 10 literacy, and 1 writing activity. For a closer look please check out the preview picture in full. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me! As always, it will be on sale the first 2 days it is up in my shop!
I'll be back soon with more classroom updates and a peak at our Thanksgiving happenings!
Until then, happy teaching!
