Ready for Thanksgiving

Hello Parents,

Wow this was such a fun week getting ready for Thanksgiving. There are so many projects that we did and fun reflection activities which of course means tons of pictures in this post, so enjoy!

Finger Painted Leaves

The kids have been begging me to do some more finger painting so I figured with the beautiful fall leaves outside our window as inspiration, we would do some color mixing finger painting to make a leaf masterpiece. Students got to pick which leaf they wanted for me to glue on the top and students got to pain the white paper that became the background color of the leaf. I gave students yellow red and brown paint and let them mix it how they wanted to make the perfect leaf color! I was so impressed with how seriously students took this project and how hard they worked to make the perfect leaf color. They were color mixing magicians and their leaves turned out beautifully!

Thankful Turkeys

One of my favorite November activities is coming up with some ideas of things that we are thankful for. We read some wonderful thankful books to get our ideas going and then as a class we came up with a list of things that students shared they were thankful for.

After we made the list students were able to make their turkeys with one thing they are thankful for on each feather. They turned out so cute and I was so impressed by how thoughtful the kids were with what they included on their feathers.

Pattern Block Turkeys

A fun activity that incorporates math and turkeys was our pattern block turkeys. I taped a turkey picture to the tables and students had to arrange pattern blocks to be the turkeys feathers. Once they were done they filled out a recording sheet to figure out how many of each shape they used. We also talked about symmetry and what it would look like for the feathers to be symmetrical on the turkey.

Turkey Drawings

Finally our week wouldn't be complete without a directed drawing of a Turkey. Step by step we dew out our turkeys and I let students color them however they wanted! They turned out so great and decorate our walls of our classroom beautifully!

Thank you all for coming to parent teacher conferences. I loved getting to speak with each of you about your children. I love getting to spend every day with them! Only 3 weeks left until winter break. Lets make it awesome!

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Halloween Week!

Hello Parents,

We had a fun and busy Halloween week! On Halloween time was spent experimenting with pumpkins, painting our Frankenstein drawings and watching room on the broom. Students also did some trick or treat writing and we have started working on comparing numbers to figure out which is greater or less!

Pumpkin Experiment 

To start out our day we got to take a closer look at pumpkins. Students worked with a partner to count the lines on their pumpkin, measure the height of their pumpkin, draw their pumpkin and predict whether their pumpkin would float or sink. After every group finished their predictions we went outside to test out our pumpkins to see whether they sank to the bottom or floated at the top! Many students thought that the big pumpkin we tested would sink, and they were blown away when it stayed at the top of the water! After testing our pumpkins in water, we went back inside, cut open one of our pumpkins and together counted the seeds! We cut one of the smaller pumpkins but we still found out that there were roughly 360 seeds inside! Here are a few pictures from our experimenting!

A student looks at the pumpkin floating!

Students put pumpkin seeds in a ten frame to count them.

All of our pumpkin seeds in ten frames.

The Monsters Monster

The day before Halloween I read students one of my favorite Halloween books called the Monsters Monster by Patrick McDonnell. From there we were able to draw our own Frankenstein monsters! Then on Halloween we took the tine to watercolor them! The students did a great job and they turned out so creative and colorful!

Room on the Broom

Another wonderful Halloween book is Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson. I love this story because while it has Halloween themes it also has a great message about making room for others and including everyone. Netflix has a wonderful version of this book as a movie so during our Halloween party we watched the movie version while we had our Halloween snacks. It was a wonderful end of our day of celebration!

Watching Room on the Broom!

Cleaning our Classroom

About once every two weeks we have what I call “cleaning dance parties.” Basically I turn on kids music, give everyone a rag and we clean anything and everything in our classroom! The kids love it and I love getting to watch them clean and dance at the same time! I also love that they are gaining ownership of our classroom and discovering that we all have to help out to keep our classroom clean and ready for us to learn! 

Students clean our scissors and markers.

A student cleans off our whiteboards.

I can’t believe we are going into our last 5 day week before conferences! 

Cheers to the week ahead,

Miss Adams