Dear Families,
We began the week looking closely at pumpkins. We noticed that the stem was attached to the round body with a star shape. We looked at tiny details on the skins of pumpkins with magnifying glasses and attempted to draw and paint what we saw. Children really concentrated on this and then often added elements from their imaginations to the picture – batman trucks driving through the pumpkin patch and pumpkins that jumped and rolled high up into the sky!
We also experimented with pumpkins and water – would they float or sink? Every time we put a pumpkin in our water it bobbed and floated to the surface. Why do some things float and some things sink we wondered. We tried other objects too – some things that were shaped like fish surprisingly sank. Other things like pencils that many thought would sink actually floated!
Drawing pumpkins.
- “I make my pumpkin jumping into the sky.”
“He’s floating!”
Pumpkin face made with projector.
Pumpkin Moonshine!
This is what a pumpkin looks like from above. The stem is a star just like the star inside an apple!
Mrs. Hilliard left a large beautiful spider puppet in the class. Several children shared that spiders were scary. We began to look at books about spiders and examine their astonishingly beautiful webs. We learned that spiders have spinnerets, they are arachnids, not insects and they use webs to trap their food. We began to work on a large web for Mrs. Hilliard’s puppet, whom we are calling, “Esmerelda.”
Looking at the incredible webs of spiders on the computer!
Drawing the big outline of our web.
Gluing paths for sticky strings.
A web with blocks.
Esmerelda on her web.
Attaching strands with ‘dewdrop’ beads.
What’s inside a spider’s body?
Attaching bugs to the web.
A beautiful home for a spider.
We also celebrated Halloween this week, dressing up, visiting classrooms and offices, searching for little pumpkins and apple dolls in the library and eating banana ghosts, dried raspberries, clementine pumpkins, homemade ginger cake and hot chocolate! Thank you all for the delicious contributions to our party.
Batman!
Pixie dust pirate!
Kitty cat!
Princess!
Tigger! (without his costume on.)
We found them all!
I look forward to meeting with all of you on Thursday or Friday and having the chance to talk and look at all the amazing work your children have accomplished thus far.
Happy November,
Sarah
