Witch writing

We have been completing many pieces of Halloween writing. You may have seen some of our little booklets at home. In an attempt to entice a few more young writers, we offered some "witch's fingers" as an incentative. Suddenly, we had a number of very excited creative writers. If your child brings home a book and a witch's finger, please help them celebrate his or her efforts.

Outdoor time

With some relatively nice weather over the past week, we managed to get each class outside for a nature walk. We are so incredibly lucky to have the green space we have on our school grounds. Our task while outdoors was to look for some of the changes in the forest that has occurred with fall setting in. We found 3 nests, lots of seeds, beautiful leaves, and a crunchy sound as we walked through the woods. Look at the joy in our faces!

Halloween Spelling

With Halloween approaching, we have been talking about bats, cats, rats, spiders, witches, etc, and those who love to write are writing about these things. We tried some whole group spelling, depicting the "at" family. We built "cat", "rat", "hat", "bat", but then other words not associated with Halloween as well such as " mat", "fat", etc. Be sure to ask your child if he or she can spell any of these words!

Thank you

Thanks for your patience as we reorganized the previous two classes into three. Having a class size of 20-22 students is so different and preferable! Thank you so much to those of you who have sent in the voluntary $20 fee. We have split it up appropriately between the old class and the newly formed class. If you wish to still contribute, it is not too late. The money is extremely helpful with the purchase of various craft items and baking materials.

Witches Brew

Anticipating the upcoming season, our water table has been transformed into "Witches Brew"! We have a variety of frogs, bats, spiders, eyeballs, snakes, pumpkins and mini cauldrons. There are eye droppers and tweezers that help the students with fine motor skills as they pick a variety of items. We have a possible "recipe" posted. Students are encouraged to create his or her own recipe after we brainstormed for potential ingredients. 

Library Day for Blue Group

Tomorrow is a library day for the Blue Group.  Many students return their book in the days leading up to library day.  We do not keep track of who brings them back, but keep them safely stored in a library bin.  On the day before library day, we try to remember to put the library reminder slip in your child's Note Tote.  Please do not be alarmed if you get this, and have already returned the book.  For simplicities sake, we simply put one in each Note Tote as we have not kept track of who has returned a book to date.

Mmmmm...pumpkin muffins

With the help of an extra adult (Ainslee's grandma), we made pumpkin muffins today. The pumpkin was already cooked and the dry and wet ingredients were assembled and mixed. Each student then mixed his or her own muffin, put it into the muffin tray and then washed and dried the bowl and spoon. We got the chance to sample them later this afternoon, and all agreed, they were delicious! The blue group will make them tomorrow.

Pumpkin Muffins

4 eggs

2 cups of white sugar

1 1/2 cups of oil

2 cups of pumpkin puree

3 cups of flour

1 tablespoon of cinnamon

2 tsp of baking powder

2 tsp of baking soda

1 tsp of salt

2 cups of raisins

Beat eggs slightly, add sugar, oil and pumpkin.  Add the dry ingredients. Mix.  Bake at 350 degrees.  Makes 24 muffins.

Alphabet Hunt

This afternoon, we went on an alphabet hunt! Hidden at the edge of the forest were some "letter vests". Our class very excitedly ran into the forest in search of the hidden letters. Once found, they had to shout out what letter they had found. Once we seemed to have located all of them, at one of the girl's suggestion, we got into alphabetical order to ensure that we had found them all!

Some letters were missing, as there are no longer 26 students in our class!

Pumpkin Investigation

We have a variety of pumpkins within the classroom. We were reading a story that showed some people who had hollowed out large pumpkins and used as boats. Finding this quite fascinating, we decided to find out if pumpkins really did float! We tried a number of different sized ones, to discover that indeed they did float. I then posed the question, that if the pumpkins were relatively heavy, why did they float? On the following day, one student explained that pumpkins floated since they were full of air- his dad told him!  I brought in some rocks and chunks of wood that were similar weight to the pumpkins. We then tried to see if they floated. Of course, the rock sank, but  much to their surprise, the wood chunk floated! We watched a short youtube video of a pumpkin regatta ( yes, they really do exist!) Our inquiry will continue and we will open the pumpkin, and see if it floats, and what we can do to make it sink. 

The original story that sparked our inquiry.

Comparing the weight of a pumpkin to that of a chunk of wood.

Hmmm...it floats!

Smile!

Don't forget, tomorrow (Friday, Oct. 3) is picture day!  Individual shots will be taken, but the class photos may be delayed until the new Kindergarten classes have been formed.  Usually, Kindergarten students are asked to have photos taken during the first part of the morning in an effort to take photos while they are still clean and groomed!