A Little Pumpkin Fun

Our HUGE class pumpkin arrived a few days ago.  Its arrival sparked all kind of questions, observations and discoveries.  We read lots of great pumpkin books and learned how pumpkins grow. Pumpkin, Pumpkin & It's Pumpkin Time were two of our favorites. 

Each day, we looked at our pumpkin and wrote down some of our observations.  We though about all of the different words we could use to describe it.  The children did really well with this. They came up with a lot of describing words.

We measured the height and circumference of our pumpkin.  We found out that it was 16 cubes tall and 35 links around.

We also tried picking our pumpkin up so we could determine what it was heavier than and what it was lighter than.

This wasn't as easy as we thought!  In the end, we decided that our pumpkin was heavier than our Legos and lighter than a school bus.

Finally, we were ready to look inside our pumpkin.  The children were so funny.  Some of them even squealed when they grabbed some of the pulp.  

While I drew the face and started to carve, the children separated the seeds from the pulp.

Finally, it was time to turn the lights out and look at our Jack-O-Lantern!

Blackie

This morning, there was a big surprise waiting in the Science Center....our new class pet hamster!  The children were so excited.  They wanted to know all about our new friend.

This afternoon we had a class meeting and named her Blackie.  

I think Blackie is going to be a climber.  We better kept the lid on really well!

   

One More Math Game

This week, after reading Fish Eyes, by Lois Elhert, the children learned a new math game.  One More has quickly become a favorite at the game center.  

Who knew that learning math could be so much fun?   

Behavior Celebration

We had so much fun at the 1st nine week's behavior celebration!  We spent the morning outside playing and enjoying the wonderful weather.  It was a great way to celebrate the Explorers in our class!