Pumpkin Day

We had SO MUCH FUN this morning with our pumpkins theme.  We started the day playing with pumpkin pie play dough and though it was very sticky it was a hit!  Then everyone got to pick their own pumpkin.  We washed it in the sink and then drew all over it with markers.  The fun aspect of doing that with washable markers is that you can easily wipe it off and start decorating all over again!

 We also did investigations with our pumpkins.  We cut open one large pumpkin to investigate the parts of the pumpkin (and play with the guts!).  We took turns measuring the height, circumference and weight of each pumpkin.  Then we had to see if each pumpkin would sink or float (a great way to wash off the marker so they can go home clean).

 We practiced finding the word "the" in our poem about 5 Little Pumpkins and then we danced and sung along to the song.

 Preschool B started the afternoon in two groups.  One group played Starfall Speedway with me and the other group worked on 38 piece puzzles. I love the Starfall Speedway game.  It has 4 different games in one so you can tailor it to match the needs of the child(ren) you are playing with.  You can work on letter names and sounds, sounding out CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) 3 letter words and you can work on more difficult words that include digraphs and consonant blends.  The kids love playing it and we are able to work on the one-to-one counting and turn taking aspects of playing a game.  I think we'll play this game more often now that I remember how much we all love it.

We also worked on our letter I beginning reader book from the Amazing Action Alphabet today.  That's a tricky one with that tricky 4 letter word: "sits".  Another reading group started Ready2Read Level 1 Unit 1 today.  I was so proud of them being able to move forward in their reading, they're getting it!  For our themes today each student picked a page from their encyclopedia and we worked one-on-one to mark the words they could read.  I'd encourage you to read this way through the whole page with them.  You could even pick other pages to do over the weekend and through next week if you like (no encyclopedia work in school next week).

 We continued our work on graphing today.  We pulled out the scissors and cut and glue pages.  I was proud of them for getting the hang of graphing so quickly.

 We're starting to branch out into our preschool B art format of picking what we'd like to do each day.  Today it was suggested that we paint so out came the water color paints.  They had such a great time mixing colors and making designs all over their page.