Pumpkins!

Fall is one of my favorite times of year {especially at school}, so we have been busy cramming in everything we can related to fall! We started learning about pumpkins last week and are having a blast.
First, we learned all about how pumpkins grow. We made a big anchor chart together then made individual life cycles with this super cute craft from my sweet friend Alisha {The Bubbly Blonde}.

We also used our own class pumpkin to do a little pumpkin investigation.
First we estimated the circumference of our pumpkin by pulling a piece of yarn to be how long around the pumpkin was. Then, we measured and two lucky kiddos estimated correctly! {You should have heard the cheers!}

Then, we estimated the weight of our pumpkin. We took it to the office to weigh on our data entry secretary's scales and while we were there, we weighed ourselves {umm...the kids did - no way in heck I was hopping on those things!}

Then, we went outside to cut our pumpkin open. The kids thought it was so cool! We thought of words that described the outside of the pumpkin and the inside of the pumpkin and charted them in different colors {love this idea from Cara!}

We also stayed busy reading lots of fiction stories about pumpkins to get in lots of Common Core standards.
We read Spookley {always a favorite} and charted his characteristics, then used our chart to write a describing sentence about Spookley.

Another one of our favorite stories was Too Many Pumpkins! It is such a cute book and perfect for working on beginning, middle, and end. I really tried to get the kids to work on the details in their pictures and I think they did great!

 Friday we read The Biggest Pumpkin Ever and compared the two main characters. This is a perfect book for meeting that standard of comparing characters within a text!

Today we read Big Pumpkin and talked about problem and solution...the kids loved this story as well!

We've also used pumpkins in our math with learning the number 9. We used our song about Pumpkins Fat and Round from last year and it has been so much fun to help us act our and decompose the number 9!

Last, but not least, the winner of Deeanna and my Spider packs is...

We'll be sending you your packs :)

Have a great, fun filled Halloween week friends!