{Pumpkins...}

Happy Harvest!! Here is my post on all our pumpkin activities...This is one of my favorite weeks and there is so much fun stuff for the kids to do...I couldn't take pictures of everything [sad face] but here is what I did get.. Enjoy...

Stained glass pumpkins

After reading Pumpkin, Pumpkin we discussed the life cycle of a pumpkin and completed this cute sequencing activity I found over at Mrs. Nelson's Class...

I also got this activity from Mrs. Nelson's Class...It is based on the Five Little Pumpkin poem... However, her version edits out the Halloween elements, which I appreciate since we can not do any kind of Halloween activities at my school...

It is a great project to see which students still need additional help with fine motor skills and their visual spatial ability...

Hanging paper pumpkin lanterns....

Torn Candy Corn...Another awesome fine motor project..and who doesn't love tearing paper?

I made pumpkin ice cubes dyed with red food coloring and we put them in yellow juice to make orange..

PUMPKIN PANCAKES!! One of our former room moms came back to make this delicious treat for our kids... So fun and yummy!!

The kids used straws to blow watered down green paint around paper to make vines...then they added pumpkin cutouts....

Pumpkin patterns...We practiced AB patterns this week with this activity...[stick around til the end and maybe they'll be a freebie..]

No pumpkin week is complete without painting pumpkins!

Don't they look fantastic? I love 'em...

I saw this over at Growing Kinders ...Kathleen did hers on the life cycle of an apple, so I thought why not the pumpkin?  Like hers, the pictures are velcro so the kids can arrange them..There are also numbers on the back so they can self check...

We also carved a pumpkin and completed these cool observation sheets I also found at Mrs. Nelson's Class ...I think it's perfect for my kids...We haven't finish them yet, but we will next week...

We also did a few pocket chart activities including This is Pumpkin Happy and Pumpkin, Pumpkin based on the book...

So that was all the fun we had learning about pumpkins and thanks for sticking aroung through the end.... and as promised here is the Pumpkin Patterns freebie! [click the image to download]

Thanks for reading...

{Spiders, Oh My...Part II..}

Tomorrow is the last day of October... I can hardly believe it!  Where does the time go?!? I apologize for being MIA, but you know how it is [there are not enough hours in the day]...

 

So I have lots to share, but I don't want this to get too long so I'm going to divide it into two posts...But before we start I have to share a picture of my baby sister getting ready to go to Homecoming last night

Doesn't she look beautiful?

Okay, thanks for letting me have my moment..lol... On to SPIDERS...

After reading various versions of the story I asked my class to draw their own illustrations of where their spider might climb and here are a few samples..

Then we made hanging spiders.. this is a great fine motor activity as well as math [they needed to count the legs...] and it's cute...

We also marble painted spider webs and stuck spider stickers on them...I love these!

And of course paper plate spider webs...

I hope you enjoyed the pictures of what we did for spiders...Don't forget to check out my previous post for a spider freebie...

Next up PUMPKINS!

{Spiders, Oh My...}

I don't know about you but spiders tend to give me the nilly willies!! [Not sure if that's spelled correctly or even a word, but that's how they make me feel!]  But this week, that's what we have been learning all about... Since the week is not yet over I don't have all my pictures to share but I wanted to share an activity page with you with a Spider theme...  At my school we use the ABeka program so these are the first five letters we focus on...  The kids trace the letter in the web and then color the spider with the matchin lowercase letter...

Click on the image for a copy!

Happy Wednesday!

{Finally Fall..Well Almost...}

Hey All,

So I know some of you already have the privilege of enjoying fall, but here is Southern California the weather can not make up it's mind!.. Haha... We got  taste of fall last week and today but word on the street is that sometime next week we will be back in the 90's... I mean I love living in So. Cal., but sometimes it would be nice to actually enjoy all four seasons...

Which leads me to my next point...This week we began learning about Fall & Leaves which is so fun, except when your little darlings are having trouble grasping this season when they are wearing shorts and all the leaves on the yard are still GREEN!  We even went on a leaf hunt to look for some colorful leaves but instead came back with green leaves... But we still had a good time and are looking forward to our next theme...SPIDERS!  I love this theme--it is truly one of my favorites...

So while we had a ball learning about leaves.. I took ZERO pictures {sad face}, but I will list some of the activities we did and post a freebie at the end...Yay!

1. We played with our "Fall Feely Box".. basically a small cardboard box that I decorated with brown paper and colorful leaves, and filled with some fall items like pumpkins, gourds, pinecones, and leaves... These were some home decorations I picked up at Wal-Mart one year and they've lasted awhile... We pass the box around the circle, the kids close their eyes and stick in their hands and pull out a fall surprise..

2. We Q-Tip painted leaves using the colors of fall...these are now hanging in my room...

3. We read Leaf Man and created collages using the leaves we found on our leaf hunt...

and

4. We painted trees and added orange, yellow, and green tissue paper for leaves...

That was the extent of Fall & Leaves, but we'll come back to it in a few weeks when we talk about pumkins and Harvest... Now to the moment you've been waiting for... There is a new blog out there Classroom Freebies where teachers can post FREE resources for other teachers... a whole collection of free stuff! [need I say more!]..It's pretty awesome..

So click on the image to download this freebie and look around Classroom Freebies!

Happy Blogging!

{Made it to October...}

Hello October! We made it!! Whew.. September flew by and boy were we busy!  My little darlings are adorable and we have so much fun [we're still working on classroom procedures...but hey, as Pete the Cat would say "It's all good!"]

So I finally took pictures of our other All About Me projects and some Apple things we worked on...

These are self portraits of the kids...They added their selected hair color and added eyes, a nose and mouth... Then after we read A my name is Alice... we did an extented writing activity... I think they turned out S-U-P-E-R adorable... These are definitely going in their portfolios..

Family Trees!  My team teacher and I had the kids paint the trunk of the tree and had them dictate to us the people who live in their house...Then the leaves and names were added... This was a great language activity and led to a lot of fun discussions...



Okay, I think I've covered all the All About Me things... On to Apples!

So some of the books we read were
-Apple Trouble
-Johnny Appleseed
-Apples and Autumn
-Ten Apples on Top
-Up! Up! Up! It's Apple Pickin' Time
-A Day at the Apple Orchard
-Big Red Apple
-Little Mouse and the Big Apple

Apple Themes are so fun and there is so much to do out there!  We used to do two weeks but now we're down to just one so we gotta pack it all in...

On Monday, we tasted apples and completed our graph... We also completed our Apple Investigation page which I snagged over at Julie Lee's blog... It was awesome and the kids had a great time... Well anytime food is involved they're excited...

After tasting apples we wrote sentences using "juicy" words to describe apples...

This is not the best picture-I thought I had a better one but here are the stained glass apples... I think I loved this the best--they came out fabulous!! We also painted paper plates into apples and added the phrase "Apple of my Eye"  don't know where pictures of thos are either..haha

I saw this anchor chart on Cara Carroll's fantastic blog The First Grade Parade... She has a ton a great ideas... I know she teaches first grade, but a lot of her activities can be adapted to meet the needs of my kids, such as this chart to teach the parts of an apple... It was so cute, whenever they had an apple for lunch they would label the parts...

We also used these sequencing cards [also found at The First Grade Parade] to learn how apples grow...

We also did a pocket chart poem that I found somewhere online [which is another picture I can't find..Ugh!] but here is what is said

This is apple happy.

This is apple sad.

This is apple sleeping.

This is apple mad.

This is apple in pieces small.

But in pie he's best of all.

[I added die cuts of apples with the appropriate expressions... the kids do this as a center]

And finally, we did an apple themed beginning sounds activity I found over at Kindergarten Hoppenings... Shannon has some awesome things to do with your class!

Next week we're on to Fall so I'll be back with those updates next week!  I hope that you find these activities and projects helpful and I would love if you would follow my blog. 

Happy Blogging!