It Finally Feels Like Fall!

It's a little cooler out this week, and we are finally starting to see some changes outside! We spent a lot of our week learning, playing and creating with natural materials. Some of them we found outside on the church grounds, and others were brought in by Ms. Heather because we just don't have pumpkins, sunflower seeds and wheat growing at school. :)

We started out on Monday by taking a big bucket outside with us as we wandered the grounds on a nature walk. We looked for interesting leaves, acorns, bark, sticks, and grasses to put in our bucket for learning all week.

The book Leaf Man has amazing illustrations- all made out of leaves! We used the book for inspiration as we designed our own nature projects. Our creativity was in high gear- this art is amazing!

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have been reading a lot about Thanksgiving this week. We used more of our natural materials to make some Fall turkeys. Carefully gluing the small seeds, leaves, etc to craft sticks was a tricky fine motor task!

  

 

We read Setting the Turkeys Free , a silly story of handprint turkeys running from a fox. We painted our hands ourselves, made some prints, and made some glamorous turkeys with bright feathers and sparkles.

  

 

 

Other activities this week included making our pilgrim collars, playing with our shucked corn in the sensory table, learning about the letter L, practicing our letter building skills with craft sticks (there are so many straight line letters!), and reading our pilgrim magazines.

 

  

 

 

 

 

  

Well, all of the above activities kept us busy. But, if I asked the kids what was the best, they would tell me all about the PUMPKINS!! The pumpkin patch across the street gave away all the leftover pumpkins after Halloween, and I grabbed a whole bunch of them for some hammer time. Using wooden mallets and golf tees, the kids hammered and hammered away for 3 days! If they ran out of golf tees, they pulled them out and started all over again. :) When we needed a break from hammering, we used colored rubber bands and turned those pumpkins into fall geoboards. 

Then, we usually hammered some more! 

  

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goodbye October, Hello November!

We did all kinds of different activities this week as we ended one month and began another! Here are some highlights:

Monday: All About Pumpkins!

Monday, we took the whole morning to learn about our pumpkin. We talked about our five senses, and how we could use each one to learn about the class pumpkin. Some wonderful words came up, and went on our chart, such as smooth, bumpy, striped, orange, brown, heavy, spicy and lots of others. We couldn't decide with our eyes if we were sure if our pumpkin was heavy or light, so we tried to lift it up and see. Everyone agreed it was heavy!

  

  

Then we started to get inside the pumpkin: new words like squishy and slimy were added to our pumpkin words! Every pair of kids got a big scoop of pumpkin guts to sort out the seeds and get them in the circle on the paper so we could count all the seeds- 711!!

 

 

  

  

 

 

After all that counting, Ms. Heather set to work on carving a face with the class requested round eyes, square nose, happy smile and 5 teeth. We finished using our five senses by tasting some roasted pumpkin seeds at snack time.

Tuesday: Halloween! See pics of our fun on the previous blog post.

Wednesday: Hello, November!

We started out Wednesday by going over to the church for our first practice for our Thanksgiving program coming up on November 17. After getting back to our room, we started our November placemats by painting some ocean water for a Mayflower scene. We also practiced writing our name, and cut out some more handprints for the friendship turkeys we are making over the next 2 weeks. We got in some Fall pattern practice with Ms. Heather, and did a great job "reading"the patterns to figure out the next picture. Our Halloween sensory table was cleaned up, and we had a blast shucking corn kernels off dried ears of corn that will go in the sensory table for November. They popped and jumped all over!

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday: Oatland Island Visit!

We had some special visitors on Thursday: nocturnal animals from Oakland Island Wildlife Center! We got to show off all we have learned about nocturnal animals, and even learned a few more fun facts about animals adaptions. We saw flying squirrels, which have a special flap of skin that lets them glide from tree to tree. They also have big eyes to help them see in the dark. We met Icarus the screech owl, who has amazing hearing and eyesight to help him swoop down on prey at night. Last, we learned how Sweet Pea the opossum has a strong tail to help her grab onto things while climbing, and super smelling to help her find food.

 

 

 

  

 

 

Friday: The Letter Cc!

We made a great list of Cc words at circle time, and practiced writing some Cc's on the chart paper throughout the morning. At centers, we were so excited to have some new toys to play with: castles and cars on the rug, a mini construction site on one table (that was such a favorite that it will be coming back next week too), and magnet people needing costumes on the red table for after we finished our writing center. At the writing center, we practiced our names lots of different ways- we read our name, traced it inside the highlighting, used stickers to spell it, wrote it with a pencil, and wrote it in rainbow colors. 

 

   

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  

 A big idea we will discuss throughout November is being thankful for all the good things in our lives. This week, we talked about being thankful for little stuff like our favorite toys and things, and the truly important blessings such as our families and friends. Our bulletin board in the hall has our thankful turkey hanging on it, with a feather painted by each child that shows both the big and small things that we are thankful for in our lives.