Mrs. Rachel's Kinder Prep: Pumpkin, Pumpkin!

We wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for the generous Trike-a-Thon donations! We are already enjoying some new additions in our classroom and in our school! We are also looking for some new exciting learning tools that will be arriving in our room in the next two weeks!

This week was also filled with lots of pumpkin fun! We definitely missed everyone over fall break and had an exciting first week back to school.

Everyone enjoyed learning about how pumpkins grow and what's inside a pumpkin. We read several pumpkin books that focused on the life cycle of a pumpkin and the physical characteristics of a pumpkin. Did you know some pumpkins can be blue?! We even got to see inside one, carve one, and taste pumpkin seeds this week! Some of us liked scooping the pulp and seeds a bit more than others. :)

To go along with our pumpkin theme, we used shapes to create our own paper Jack-o-lanterns. We also had fun mixing paint to paint two large class pumpkins! Our poem of the week was "Five Little Pumpkins." You can check your child's poetry folder to do this fun poem together!

In our centers this week, we enjoyed playing a fun counting pumpkin seeds game with our friends, doing a pumpkin "write the room" activity (searching for letters), working on our cutting skills to make a pumpkin puzzle, and using our thumbs to make a "thumbkin patch". We also had a grand time hammering golf tees into our pumpkin and doing a pumpkin investigation. We practiced being scientists by measuring the height of our pumpkin, counting the lines on our pumpkin, describing our pumpkin, and predicting whether it would sink or float. We even did a fun pumpkin candy science experiment!

We did a few things to review fire safety to follow the firemen coming before fall break. We practiced our listening skills to follow directions on how to draw a firetruck. (This was our first journal entry. We will be adding to our journals all throughout the year.) Here is the link to our fun song if you want to do it again with your child!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_5FqaWTj9c

Our Bible focus was on Daniel. This month, we are focusing on how we do not have to fear because God is always with us! Make sure to check out our fun October song about our Bible theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzJ8qcOBVhM

We can't wait to see them next week for more fall fun!

This week, see if your child can...
1. Create his or her own Jack-o-lantern with the pumpkin project paper we sent home.
2. Paint or carve a jack-o-lantern face that includes several different shapes.
3. Practice the "Five Little Pumpkins" poem together.
4. Practice writing the letters we have done so far in preparation for our assessment next week! (M, T, F, A, N, H, P)
5. Tell you the story of Daniel!