Monday, October 31, 2016

October 31st, 2016

Happy Halloween!!!

We've been busy these last two weeks!
Kicking off our Halloween unit, we first learned all about spiders.  We experimented with sticky spider webs and answered the question, "Why don't spiders get caught in their own webs?" (it's because spider legs are oily). 

We created spider web water colors...

...and we counted 8 spider legs.
We created an opportunity to get really messy as we fingerpainted our letter Ee's...

...and then made our spider handprints.

And a website.

We practiced writing in our small groups...

...and independently.

Switching gears from spiders to monsters, we made eyeball playdough...

...and fed them to monsters.

We also practiced rolling dice and writing numbers.

Reading, Go Away Big, Scary Monster, we had a great time building our own monsters with felt material.

We also got to play with monsters in our sensory bin.

Finally, we learned all about fruit bats.  We studied their parts...

and created take-home bat books.

Spiders, monsters and bats... It was time to make an ABC pattern by the week's end.

We had fun with an Ee show-n-tell.  We saw elephants and a representative from the Evil Empire.
We also made pumpkin bread on Friday.

We had a chance to cut up pumpkins one last time, then mix the ingredients together.

VoilĂ !  Preschool pumpkin bread!

Today, on Halloween, we decided to ban all processed sugar and made fruit and vegetable faces instead.

I love my job. :)

Friday, October 14, 2016

October 14th, 2016

This week, we celebrated all things pumpkin.

We started off by visiting the pumpkin patch on Monday.  It was hot, but it was a great time.

Coming back on Tuesday, we had an opportunity to examine the various pumpkins we brought back with us from the patch.  Some were bumpy, some were smooth.  Some were orange, some were spotty.

After our observations, we reflected on our experiences.

On Wednesday, we dissected some of the pumpkins to learn more about their parts.

We learned that they're gooey.

We saved some of their tops to paint with them as well.

Ode to the Pumpkin.

We didn't forget about our letter Dd, though.  We practiced writing them...

and built them with leftover pumpkin seeds.

We also had our letter Dd show-and-tell.


For math, we counted with acrylic pumpkin manipulatives...

and we counted pumpkin cutouts.  It was definitely a pumpkin-filled week!

For our cooking project, we decided to hold off on the pumpkin bread since we were inspired by the pumpkin soup recipe taught to us by the Pumpkin Patch Lady.

We scooped out a big pumpkin...

really making sure we got it all scraped clean.

We cut up carrots and onions...

and mixed them together.

We added peas...

and stew meat.

Then, we poured in some ready-made beef broth.

Finally, we closed it up and baked for 2 hours.

The end result was pumpkin soup!

It was super yummy!

It was a great week, filled with pumpkins.  Even in our hair.