Bats, Spiders and Webs...Oh, My!

It's an absolute must to learn about all things creepy and crawly before Halloween!  And that's exactly what we did - first came bats.

We read the book Stellaluna by Janell Cannon.

Our reading skill for the week was compare/contrast, so we compared and contrasted bats and birds.  We created a venn diagram and came up with facts about bats, birds and then facts that they both shared.

Other books we read to gather information were Zipping, Zapping, Zooming Bats and Bat Loves the Night.

The kids each picked a bat fact that they wrote and displayed on their bat craft.  I was amazed how much information the kids absorbed from our lessons.  They could've shared bat facts for days!

We introduced spiders with a National Geographic book called Spiders (how appropriate, right?).

We created a KWL chart to share what we already know about spiders, what we want to know about spiders and what we learned about spiders.

We also collected data on who was afraid of spiders and who wasn't - we analyzed our data to see if there were more of us afraid or not afraid.

I thought about testing our data by putting a spider on the carpet to see just how brave those 11 kids were! :)

We did get up close and personal (but only on paper) by examining the parts of a spider.

The kids each created their own spiders by labeling the parts and putting them on display in the room.

On Friday we did a fun art project.  We made marble paintings resembling spider webs.  This a great activity for fine motor skills too.  They turned out awesome!

Our final display outside of our rooms looks like this...

Ella had a birthday on Friday and we celebrated with delicious cupcakes that her mom brought in!

Our new Star Student is Gabriel Hooks!  Gabriel is very quiet, but he has opened up so much this year.  He loves to play outside at recess and really enjoys the songs we sing in class.  He does a great job following directions and loves to pick out of the treasure drawer!  Congrats to Gabriel.

Star Student - Ella Williams

Ella is our Star Student this week!  I meant to post this on Monday and then the week just got away from me.  Ella is our little mommy.  She cares so much about her friends and wants to make sure everyone is ok.  Her kind nature is an immediate draw, as she has a lot of good friends in the class.  Ella consistently stays on positive numbers and strives to work hard in class.  We were all excited to honor Ella as Star Student this week!
***Ella also has a birthday coming up on Friday, the 25th!

Indigo Farms Field Trip

We had a wonderful trip to Indigo Farms!

Pumpkin Crazy

After the completion of our Pumpkin Unit, Indigo Farms might be interested in hiring on a few new pumpkin experts from our class.

We introduced pumpkins and the life cycle with the book From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeller.

This book provides a great opportunity to work on sequencing.  As a class, we put the stages of the life cycle in order, starting with the seed.

The kids created their own 3D life cycle pumpkin to practice sequencing on their own.

We also read The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steve Kroll.

If you could've seen my reaction when I saw the pumpkin Savannah's mom brought into our classroom...HOLY PUMPKINS!  It was huge.  I thought this book would be a great way to begin making observations on size, weight, etc.

We began our pumpkin exploration with the three pumpkins donated to our class.  First, we predicted whether or not our pumpkins would float.  The majority of the kids predicted they would sink.

They were mighty surprised to see each pumpkin floating.  When we opened the pumpkins up we discussed what we found inside - seeds, pulp - but mostly, nothing at all - just air.

The pulp grossed out several of the girls, but I was pleased with how many of the kids were ready to get down and dirty.  Each table scooped out the pulp and separated out the seeds.

We grouped the seeds into piles of 10 and then counted them by skip counting.

We also measured our pumpkins with cubes to see how many cubes tall they were - it was no mystery which pumpkin was the tallest!

These were the results from our pumpkin exploration!

On Friday, we brought shapes into our unit by carving jack-o-lantern faces.  Triangles were the most popular choice!

We can't wait to pick our own pumpkins from the pumpkin patch at Indigo Farms!

This week's Star Student is Savannah Basile!

Savannah always demonstrate a friendly and kind demeanor.  She has a strong work ethic and really enjoys being at school.  She worked hard to earn her new Star Student status! :)