Pumpkins Are Delicious!
10/27/2017
This was a very exciting week for our EK Explorers; we had our first family breakfast and we were baking. After learning all about the pumpkin life cycle last week we were ready to take the last stage of that cycle, a big orange pumpkin, and turn it into something yummy to eat. On Monday we used the puree from the pumpkin that we had roasted on Friday to make pumpkin pie. Baking with pumpkin that we had roasted ourselves was a great way to extend our study of pumpkin life cycles. Taking the final stage of a pumpkins life cycle and using it to make food gave value to pumpkins and meaning to the life cycle. Pumpkin pie was a new experience for some of our kids, but everyone tried it agreed it was delicious. On Tuesday we started getting ready for our family breakfast. The students decided they wanted to make pumpkin muffins for the breakfast. In baking muffins, we practiced our measuring and counting skills, and turn taking. The students had discussed making food with pumpkins early on in our study and they were excited to be able to actually bake. We ended our week with pumpkin ice cream. The students loved our family breakfast. Our explorers were ready to share all the learning they have been doing this month and eager to show off their classroom. It is wonderful that we get to have these events at PNA, and that you as parents get to see what your child is learning and that the students get to share with you why they enjoy school. It really gives them ownership and pride in their education. Thank you to everyone who came; I know it takes a bit of schedule rearranging to make it work.
The Pumpkin Life Cycle
10/21/2017
Planting our pumpkin seeds. This week we answered the question "How do pumpkins grow?" We read lots of books, played in the dirt, explored pumpkin seeds, and learned about the pumpkin life cycle. On Monday we planted our own pumpkin seeds. Over the next few weeks we will watch the seed change to a sprout and then to a plant. We also put some pumpkin seeds in a wet paper towel so we will be able to observe the rooting process. We talked about what a pumpkin plant needs to grow. Pumpkins are a fun plant life cycle to study because of the many stages, the final product (big pumpkins!), and the visibility of the seeds in the pumpkin that start the cycle all over again. Once we planted our pumpkin seeds we needed signs to label the seeds and give instructions of care. The Explorers were excited to make these signs. I made an example sign based on what the students said the plant needed and then they went and made signs for their own plant. Some students copied the words onto their labels, others drew pictures of pumpkins, sun, and water. Either way it was great reinforcement that words, letters, and symbols have meaning and will lead to an interest in reading. We used more of our measuring skills this week when we made playdough with real pumpkin puree. Our explorers were really into smelling the pumpkin puree and they even wanted to taste it! Once our playdough was made, they used it to make pumpkin faces with the whole spices that go into pumpkin pie. We had star anise, whole cloves, and cinnamon sticks. More wonderful things to investigate with smell and to try and describe. On Friday, to get ready for next week, we prepped our pie pumpkin for a pie. The students each got a section of the pie pumpkin to separate out the seeds and scrape the guts off. We then roasted the pumpkin to make our own pumpkin puree. Next week we will take our homemade puree and use it in baking. Pumpkin faces with pumpkin playdough and whole spices
Investigating Pumpkins
10/14/2017
Our Investigations in PhotosThis week we learned vocabulary for math and science through our investigations. We will continue to use this vocabulary and these measuring processes throughout the year in our other study units. Our scientific investigations showed us how we use numbers, why numbers are important, and that numbers are valuable to us in exploring the things we are excited about.
On Friday, during our investigation of the inside of pumpkins, one of our students said they wanted to plant some of the seeds and grow a pumpkin. So next week we will be planting pumpkin seeds and learning all about how pumpkins grow! It's Pumpkin Time!
10/7/2017
This week we began our next study: Pumpkins! We are studying pumpkins because the students are very interested in them, but also because it provides ample opportunities to introduce and use pre-literacy skills and mathematics (particularly the foundational math skills of measuring and comparing). We will also study the science of how pumpkins grow, use our creativity to explore what we can do with pumpkins, and learn what foods come from pumpkins. Cutting out pumpkins and hay bales for our pumpkin journals Project Beginnings We spend the first week of every study talking about what we know about the subject, and what we don't know and want to learn. For instance, we knew that pumpkins can come in different colors, but do different colored pumpkins grow from the same plant? We know that you can eat pumpkins in pie, but what part of the pumpkin do you bake? And are are all pumpkins orange inside? To get us thinking about pumpkins we created pumpkin journals where we will keep all our notes and work on pumpkins. In the process of creating the covers for these journals, the students practiced their fine motor skills with scissors and colored pencils. Please check out our pumpkin project board in the classroom. It has our shared writings of what we know and what we want to learn, as well as the students ideas of what they want to explore with our pumpkins. Creating our pumpkin shopping list The capstone to this week was a shopping trip to Fred Myer to purchase actual pumpkins for our classroom. The children decided that we needed real pumpkins in class in order to actually study them. On Thursday I gave the students photos and charts of different types of pumpkins and they worked together to to choose which kinds of pumpkins they wanted to buy to study. They picked big orange ones, green and white ones, tiny ones, striped ones, and pumpkins in non-traditional shapes. Even this simple exercised helped them expand their vocabulary and think about the different words needed to describe variations in pumpkins. We want the ways that we study in the classroom to be student-led as much as possible. Letting the students pick the pumpkins that we would bring into the classroom gave them ownership over this study from the very beginning. Going out into the community also expaned this study and learning into the real world and helped connect their school world to their home world. Our EK explorers did so well on our field trip. I am very proud of them. They followed the guidelines for safety that we talked about and behaved very appropriately in the store. They were teamed up into groups of 3 and each group had a shopping list of types of pumpkins they needed to pick out (based on our shopping list from Thursday). Inspecting our new pumpkins and drawing still lifes Finally, on Friday afternoon, we lined up and counted all our pumpkins, 24! We inspected and touched and talked about how different all the pumpkins were. The students then each picked a pumpkin and did a still life drawing. We used this activity to share ideas and techniques of drawing. "Look how she used long vertical lines to show the pumpkins ribs" "He is drawing the big orange pumpkin. See how his orange oval takes up the whole paper to show that it is the big pumpkin." Our pumpkins from the shopping trip Important NoticeWe have a number of allergies in our classroom. Due to an incident this week we are moving to a nut free classroom. (We have students with peanut, cashew, and pistachio allergies.) Please remind your student that we cannot share food with our friends because it can make them sick Thank you for your help with this. Please email or talk to me in class with any questions or concerns you may have. Reminders~Please make sure you are signing your child in and out on the clipboard. ~Thank you for sending in hats and gloves with your student. We are still needing warm gear and rain gear at recess depending on the day. If you take it home during the weekend please make sure to send it back to school on Monday. ~Please lable all gear with your child's name or initals. Many students have simular items. ~Now is a good time to check cubbies and restock any items that have been used. Upcoming~Parent Teacher conferences are on October 26th. An email about signing up will go out this week.
~If you need EDP care for confernces and/or for our professional development day sign up here. Space is limited. |
Anna RamseyArchives
April 2021
Categories |