Fall Festival

Our Fall Festival was a huge success and a lot of fun!  A big THANKS goes out to all of the parents who helped make it a smooth and exciting day for all of the children!

The students made spider shirts earlier in the month for the big day.... appropriate right!

Pumpkin bowling.....

 Decorating pumpkins....

 A Gypsy surprise....

 Ring toss onto a witches hat....

 Fishing......

 Face painting......

 Spin art......

 More ring toss.......

Big Fun and LOTS of smiles!!!!

Fun Activities

These are just some pictures of some fun activities we did during the month of October I thought I needed to share.......

I introduced my students to a really fun place value game this month. Each student draws three vertical lines on their board and labels each column with ones, tens, hundreds, thousands.  each students takes a a turn rolling the die and all of the students choose what column they want to place their number.  After four numbers have been rolled, each child goes around and reads their number to the class (good practice), I then choose a "winner card".  They say things such as, "the winner is the person with the largest total number" or "with the smallest number in the tens place".  They loved the game and begged me to allow them to keep playing it.  I have now placed it on the shelf for two students at a time to play during our work cycle.

This was a lesson I put on the self for the month.  The students have been really interested in cursive.  I have had them start cursive practice with their name.  I found this idea on Pinterest and thought it would be fun for them to create.  

First they needed to write their name in cursive on a folded in piece of paper.

 Then cut it out very close to the lines.

Next, they open their name up and it creates the torso of a skeleton and they cut out the arms, legs, hands, feet, and skull to make the rest.

Spiders

This unit was a lot of fun.  The students did three part cards during our work cycle on spiders to familiarize themselves with the parts of a spider and the differences between spiders and insects.  They participated in lessons such as categorizing spider based phrases into what spiders "do", "have", and "are".  We also read a few fables from different cultures about the spider and why it has two parts to it's body.  

At the ned of our unit we created a life cycle.  The students were asked to choose a piece of paper and cut out a circle.  They were then given all of the items necessary to create the life cycle and told to put it in order.  I gave them a few minutes to work independently.  They did great!  

 We then glued them to the circle and they labeled each step.

 This was soooo fun!!  My students are still talking about this next activity.
 Each student sat in a circle on the ground.  I handed one student a ball of yarn.  They were to say a fact they learned about spiders and then toss the yarn to another student to say a fact, while still holding a pinch of the yarn.  As they continued they noticed it was making a web.

                                      
We then discussed how spiders may have many eyes but they still have very poor eyesight.  We talked about what we learned in regards to how they know an insect has landed on their web....... THE VIBRATIONS!!  They got it!!

I then had them close their eyes as I threw plastic insects into the web.  If they felt a vibration they needed to raise their hand.  They had a lot of fun and a lot of giggles with this activity.  See all those bugs in that web?

Pumpkins

This month was a whirl wind.  We did a unit on pumpkins, spiders, and our skeleton.  The students had a lot of fun learning about the parts of a pumpkin, so with that, we actually dissected a pumpkin, baked it, and made pumpkin pie...... YUM!!

 Here they are eating their pumpkin pie.   A total Success!!