Pumpkins, Stamp Games, Halloween… Oh My!

This week in the Tulip room we were crazy for pumpkins! Life cycle of a pumpkin, parts of the pumpkin as well as gourd research is going on! We cut open a pie pumpkin and looked at its parts, then roasted it for our pumpkin soup that we made Friday! Thank you Ms. Kristine for staying and making our pumpkin soup and homemade croutons with us, and great job Leo for reading a pumpkin story to the Oak room and to Gargi & Lilli for sharing a sampling of the pumpkin soup with them! We even saved the seeds because we have lots of different ideas of things we might do with these seeds, we might bake them, plant them or even do some art with them. In addition we have three different sizes of pumpkin in our classroom that we are estimating the seed count for and have voted for which one might have the most; could it be the small, medium or large pumpkin?? Who knows!!  Along with our pumpkin studies we are asking  each child to bring in a …… (You guessed it!) recipe to share! So we have had apple, broccoli & now pumpkin recipes assigned! Can’t wait to see them all!

With our calendar studies going on, we did some fun birthday studies and to wrap it all up the 3rd, 4th & 5^th graders prepared a “Birthday Party” for the classroom! They did a marvelous job with invitations, decorations, food & games! We had quite the party Friday afternoon!

Things were stamp-mazing this week with the stamp games! The stamp game is a Montessori material that we use to do all the operations, from addition to squaring. We have two in our classroom and they were being used most all the time and even being waited on! New lessons abounded with the stamp game this week! Ask your child if they have used the stamp game!

Wow, those spelling tests are really improving! You can see the confidence in the children on their spelling tests if they had time to practice. Keep it up and be looking for their spelling words in their backpacks each Friday!

Just a reminder of things coming up; First it is fall break this week (please insert the sound of cheering here) which means we have a half day on Wednesday with pick-up at 11:45am (no lunch) and are off on Thursday and Friday. Second is that Halloween is around the corner! On Tuesday, October 31^st we will put on our costumes (please nothing scary or violent; including no scary masks or weapons) and take a parade to surrounding business (by pre-approval).  Please have your children pack their costumes in their backpacks for this event, as we will still have a full day of learning that day.  The joys of the Elementary class are that these children are able to dress/un-dress themselves, if you feel like your child might struggle with the costumes, please practice with them before the big day. Thank you to everyone for signing up for a conference time! We can’t wait to speak to each one of you!

Thank you to our observers who have come to watch our classroom lately, and a special thank you to Brenda Mack who worked like a champion, copying, sorting, laminating and so on, making my life a dream, you are amazing!  I also want to send a “Thank you” shout out to whoever is picking up cutting works for us! It’s like magic! I simply hand something to Brenda and back it comes a day or two later! So thank you secret cutters!