Pumpkin Week!

Take a peek into our pumpkin week! 🙂

This week in Math we focused on length and weight. We began the week by predicting what we thought the circumference of our classroom pumpkin would be. Each student got to guess how long they thought the string needs to be to fit perfectly around our pumpkin. Then each student got to test out their prediction. This was TONS of fun and we got so excited for those students who predicted the circumference perfectly!

Here are our results!

We graphed our results on our own data page.

Then we wrote about the results of our predictions.

We read the story, ‘From Seed to Pumpkin’ by Wendy Pfeffer and did some interactive writing on the growth process of a pumpkin.

We discussed descriptive words/adjectives and each got a chance to really observe our classroom pumpkin with our hands and eyes.

We shared and recorded the adjectives of our classroom pumpkin.

Our sight word focus this week was ‘is’. We read our sight word mini book on the pocket chart. This sight word reader also focused on colors this week!

We practiced tracing and writing the sight word ‘is’.

You can grab this tracing page for free HERE!

We started our morning with some ten frame practice! We counted the dots in the ten frames and matched it to the correct pumpkin.

We discussed words that remind us of ‘length’ and we sorted the words under two different sized pumpkins.

We jumped right into a very fun and hands-on math activity! We measured our classroom pumpkin with different objects. We started with unifix cubes.

We wrote our predictions and results in our pumpkin measurement books.

Next up was paper clips!

We wrote our predictions and results in our pumpkin books and drew a picture of the pumpkin next to the correct number of paper clips.

Our last test was crayons!

We also placed our predictions and results in our measuring books and drew a picture to show the height of the pumpkin.

I wrote everyones predictions on our chart to make it more exciting and for my class to see how many students predicted the correct number! We also placed the results on the bottom of the chart.

We reread the story, ‘From Seed to Pumpkin’. We made flip books that showed the process of how a pumpkin grows! I was so proud of how well they did at making these books. They were also so proud of their books! I caught a few of them hugging their books when they finished putting it together.

🙂

 

   

   

   

   

We reread and highlighted our focus sight word ‘is’ in our sight word reader on the pocket chart today.

Then we traced, wrote, and rainbow wrote the sight word ‘is’.

We finished our pumpkin measuring books today by writing about our classroom pumpkin. Since we have been working on adjectives/descriptive words, I had them write something that describes our classroom pumpkin.

These little pumpkins were part of a FUN math activity today! They can be found at target for $1! I bought a pack for each table to use for our math activity and there was more than enough!

We used those little plastic pumpkins to measure different classroom items.

   

   

We recorded the results on our recording sheet.

Then we wrote about which classroom item we measured was the shortest and longest.

We had so much fun measuring different classroom items with pumpkins that we wanted to be measured too! We had the help from our table friends and took turns seeing how many pumpkins tall each person was.

   

Then we recorded our results!

We read ‘The Biggest Pumpkin Ever’ by Steven Kroll today. This is such a cute story! We also wrote about what we would do if we had this biggest pumpkin ever! We placed our writing on top of ‘The Biggest Pumpkin Ever’ 🙂

I had my students write our sight word ‘is’ all around a pumpkin picture since that was our sight word focus of the week. Then they unscrambled words to build a sentence on the pumpkin.

   

We also read our sight word mini reader today and got our own books. I forgot to take pictures! Sorry!

We started today with beginning sound sorting on pumpkins. I love doing little activities like this first thing to get them settled into the classroom and help them wake up 🙂 The weather changing has been making us extra sleepy lately. By ‘us’ I mean me too!

   

Today I gave each table 3 different sized pumpkins. In their measuring mini books they predicted how many unifix cubes, paperclips, and crayons would be needed to get from the bottom of the pumpkin to the top. They did this for each pumpkin. After they made their predictions they started testing out their predictions!

I swear they didn’t even know I was in the classroom during this activity. They were all so engaged and working independently! They were really into seeing if their predictions were correct! Ohh the excitement they had when they were right on! So cute!

We came together as a whole group at the end of the activity and discussed our results and recorded it on our anchor chart.

Today we made our very first glyph! I told the that they were going to make a pumpkin that was all about them today. I got looks like I was a crazy person! Once we got started, they quickly realized what I meant!

Here are how our pumpkin glyphs turned out!

   

We reread, ‘The Biggest Pumpkin Ever’ and made a Venn Diagram where we compared Clayton and Desmond. The students also filled out their own Venn Diagram but I forgot to take pictures 🙁

Today in math we talked all about weight. We discussed words that reminded us of weight and sorted the words under 2 different sized pumpkins.

I let each student pick up our classroom pumpkin so that they could get an idea of how heavy it was.

   

Then, I let them go around the room to the different objects and determine whether or not that object was heavier or lighter than our classroom pumpkin. However, we did not pick each other up! We just assumed that a boy and girl was heavier than our classroom pumpkin 🙂

Then they sorted pictures on their own of different objects that are heavier and lighter than our pumpkin.

I cut open the top of our pumpkin and I let each student reach their hand inside! This was so exciting for them!

   

We practiced using adjectives/descriptive words to talk about the inside of our classroom pumpkin.

While we had the pumpkin cut open, I took out all of the seeds during lunch and washed them off. When they came back to the room, we predicted how many seeds are in the pumpkin and then we started counting them! We counted them in groups of 10. Each time we made a group of 10 seeds, we recorded that in our pumpkin seeds book.

 I soon realized that there was probably over 500 seeds! Soooo…. while they were writing in their books, I quickly ran behind my desk and took away a TON of the seeds! No one even noticed!!! Thank goodness!! 🙂

   

In the end, I stopped at 210 seeds!

Here is our predictions and results chart. As you can see, we had some very different predictions! 🙂

I gave each student a label to decorate and taped it onto a Ziploc bag. I put a spoonful of pumpkin seeds into each bag for them to take home. I heard a lot of them talking about how they were going to plant their seeds and can’t wait to see how it grows just like we learned. They are adorable!

We finished our pumpkin glyphs by making them into books where they wrote about each part of their pumpkin. I stapled the pages behind the pumpkins.

      

      

Before my students went to specials, I had them vote for how they wanted our pumpkin to be carved into a jack-o-lantern.

When they came back, this jack-o-lantern was waiting for them!!

I also gave them pumpkin brownies to celebrate all of our fun and hard work this week learning about pumpkins. Thank you to Little Debbie again for another week of tasty brownies that go right along with our unit! 🙂

You can check out my Pumpkins Unit HERE or click on the picture below:

A lot of the activities you saw above came from some of my other products at my TPT store. You can check them out by clicking on the pictures below:

Next week we will be having lots of fun with my Turkey Unit! Love this one! We will be working a lot on patterns and will be doing lots of activities with different stories about turkeys! Can’t wait! 🙂

Have a wonderful week everyone! 🙂