Last week of October

What a fun and productive week we had!  It was wonderful to see so many parents on Friday.  Thank you for making the time to come to our celebration.  Those of you who could not, I'm with you!  I managed to peek in on my son and daughter's parties for about one minute each!

I put out some new manipulatives this week for the kids to use between 8:30 and 8:55 am.  They were to "make letters" with these and just look what they were able to do.

On Monday, our first Character Counts winners were congratulated and celebrated with a special lunch on the stage.  We will be sure to share the wealth of being a CC winner so we also discussed the necessity of taking turns... just as we do with Happy Hawk, the Class Book, being Student of the Day, being the Line Leader, etc.

We also had new Math Rotations on Monday.  The kids were identifying quantities, comparing value and writing numbers to align with pictorial representations.  

 On Tuesday, we took a walk to the Wetlands so that we could observe nature with our FOUR senses.  On our way back to our classroom, we collected leaves and after reading Leaf Man, made our very own creations with the leaves we collected.  

On Wednesday, we continued to work on sequencing.  We read There Was An Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and then put the important details in order (making them into crowns was just the icing on the cake!).  We also reviewed There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves (from last week's Literacy Centers) and then put in order those important details.

On Thursday, we used our senses again to explore a pumpkin.  Mrs. Canaday took these pictures for us while I dug into our pumpkin ;)  We separated the seeds and dried them so that come spring, we can plant them and grow our very own pumpkins for next year.  When I explained to the kids that these pumpkins would be ready for them when they are FIRST-GRADERS, I pretty much blew their minds!  

Here are the shots I got during Application Centers on Thursday.  

And FINALLY... Friday.  What a fun day! We had our walk with our third-grade Buddies, shared our costumes and books, WROTE about our costumes (this was an amazing experience... the kids were so cooperative and worked so hard... even in their costumes!) and then we enjoyed our party!  Thank you all for your help and for coming to celebrate with us.