The pumpkins are coming! The pumpkins are coming!

Ok, so I think I may be the only person on the planet that gets THIS excited about pumpkins. I know, I'm silly, but for me...it's the little things in life you just gotta enjoy and for me it's PUMPKINS! (Really I love all my units of study from now until the end of the year, but this is the start of it and I'm just SO EXCITED I COULD BURST!)

My kiddos covered the life cycle of a pumpkin for this past week and boy did they do GREAT at it! I have to put a disclaimer out there...I HAVE THE BEST BUNCH OF KIDDOS EVER and they make my job super easy and fun. We started off with the plant unit last week to kind of lead into this unit (I totally planned it that way! No really, I did!) and that helped when we got to the different stages of the pumpkin life cycle.

We started the week with a big chart paper and some pictures from a pumpkin mini unit I downloaded from Mrs. Ricca's TPT store here! For my advanced students (who are working on blending and reading) they helped me spell out different words as we worked through our chart.

After we put the life cycle in order and filled in our chart, I taught the kiddos our life cycle song with the motions. (I wish I had video but alas...I did not think ahead!) It's to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell.

The seed becomes a sprout.
The seed becomes a sprout.
Hi ho did you know...
The seed becomes a sprout!

(repeat tune with each life stage)

The sprout becomes the vine.
The vine becomes a flower.
The flower becomes a pumpkin.

Hand motions:
Seed = fist with all fingers curled into palm
sprout = pointer finger extended like counting the number 1
vine = make a flat "shelf" with arm and hand all straight and parallel to the ground
flower = extend fingers like counting 5 or giving a high five
pumpkin = both hands in front of you pretending to hold a pumpkin (or a ball)

My motions were all created on the spot last year, but they worked for me so I reused them. If you have better ideas I would LOVE to hear them. I'm all for cute motions to help the kiddos learn.

Tuesday we did our pumpkin craft. OH MAN! Be prepared for the cuteness that my kiddos created!! (I think I'm biased, but meh I'm allowed.) I cut 6 pumpkin shapes for each kid in my class out ff orange construction paper. I then passed out a sheet with all the stages on it so the kids could cut them out. Before we did anything, we sang the song again so the kids could remember what we had focused on the day before. I hung the completed big poster up on my white board and then we began the craft. Now, I was VERY specific with my kids. Even down to asking them to find specific colored crayons and hold them up, so I could keep everyone on the same step and the same page. Once we colored everything I had them cut them out and glue each step on to the middle of one of their pumpkins.

From here, I planned to have the kiddos glue the pumpkins together...but we were using liquid glue which takes FOREVER to dry so instead I had the kiddos fold their pumpkins in half and I went around and stapled them to make our 3-D pumpkin!

 Adorable right!? Well I hole punched them and hung them from the ceiling above each kiddo.

 Tuesday we "read" through the pumpkin life cycle book that came with this mini unit and the kids got to color the pictures and take the book home. Thursday I planned on giving the kids a sentence strip and the stages again and then we would put the whole project together step by step, to really help them understand the stages...but on a hunch...I handed them all the materials and said "Ok guys...I wanna see what you know. Can you color these the correct colors and then put them in the right order??" I did leave the big poster up on the white board, but all I did was walk around and monitor to see if they really understood everything. I am proud to say...ALL BUT 2 OF MY KIDDOS DID THE PROJECT 100% ON THEIR OWN AND 100% CORRECTLY!!

I nearly squealed when I looked at them to see if there were enough of them correct to put up on the board. Out of 17 kiddos 15 did it perfect (granted some put them in order from right to left instead of left to right, or the pictures are upside down...but hey THEY'RE 4! That's really good for that age, with little to no direction!)

Here are the finished products!

What a great way to end! Like I said, I had planned on doing this activity together and then having them do it on their own on Friday, but rather than go back and rehash I let them come up with their own way to tell me about the pumpkin life cycles. A lot of them just sang the song I taught them, but one little boy (a little guy that is working on reading and blending already) actually came up with full body motions for the song. He curled up fetal position on the floor for seed, stuck his arm up into the air for sprout, Stuck both arms in front of him for vine, stood in star position for flower and tried to make himself a big ball by touching his toes for pumpkin. Oh my goodness, it was adorable. (Again, I wish I had video, but alas...not thinking ahead again!)

I can't wait to start our "Halloween" unit with our Pumpkin Olympics on Friday! We have some pumpkin math planned and some pumpkin science! Oh man. I'm so excited!!!

I hope everyone is having a blast in their class as well. 

And always remember: Every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

All about plants!

As a preview to lead us into out pumpkin life cycle unit I did a plant unit. I actually had a science workbook that has a chapter all about plants so I was lucky enough not to have to create my own! The kids had such a blast with this little mini-unit we did all week. 

Monday we started off with a BIG poster that we did together during our carpet time.

Yes, I know 'leaf' is easier than 'leaves' but I made the thing pointing to more than one, so when the kids said "Those are leaves!" I couldn't argue with them! Smart little kiddos! I introduced the concept of phonetic spelling (my kids are still trying to learn all their alphabet letters so this was more for my advanced students who know the sounds and letters already) and we spelled plants and stem together. I also worked on color identification by holding up the marker and having them tell me what color that particular part was. Apparently, light colors are called "baby" colors. So light blue is baby blue, baby pink, and in our case it was baby green. Adorable! 

After we did the poster together they stood up and we did little motions to help us learn what each part does. We would echo each other for the chant but here it is with motions (as best I can describe):

My roots hold me to the ground (point to feet and make a strong grabby motion with hands.)

My stem makes me stand up tall! (Hands on hips in superhero pose.)

My leaves give me food! ( jazz hands out to the side and make a sweeping motion to the mouth.)

It's so stinking cute when they do it. I just look like a fool but they rock it during carpet time!

Tuesday we did our science notebook page where they had to color their plant parts the correct colors. (Mrs. P didn't read directions very well the day before and her big chart example was backwards!) The did an awesome job with it ALL ON THEIR OWN!

 I think they did a GREAT job coloring inside the lines! Our coloring rules are REALLY starting to work!

Silly I know...but this little guy finally wrote his name ON HIS OWN!!

I posted the finished papers on our science board and the kids were so excited to show mom and dad when they came in the next morning. 

Wednesday (you can't see it) they had to draw their own plant on the back of their science notebook pages. It REALLY gave me a clear idea of who understood the different parts and who didn't. We did our dance/chant again to finish off the lesson. 

Thursday we did a nature walk and they got to find all the plants on campus and point to the different parts. The roots of most plants were a bit of a challenge because they wanted to rip up the plants to actually SEE the roots, but I can proudly say not a single plant was harmed in the making and learning of this unit!

Friday was our craft day. Now I was nervous about this part because it was complicated and a bit tedious but I plugged along and they turned out really cute! We made plants from straws pipe cleaners and paper leaves!

I got Starbucks straws and cut them in half to use for stems. Everyone received a straw, some brown pipe clearners and 4 leaves. The first thing we did was push the pipe cleaners up into the bottom of our straw. Then we filled our straw with glue to hold the pipe cleaners in. The kids rolled and pushed some green tissue paper into the other end to "cork up" the other end so glue wouldn't spill out everywhere. From there I used a glue stick to put glue on their straw and they had to stick their leaves on their straws ( I went back with white glue and glued the leaves on after school because they kept popping off!) Here is the finished product!

My students will be taking these home on Monday to show their moms and dads. They are really excited to start our pumpkin unit! Hopefully I'll have more pictures for that unit than I did for this unit. It's a lot more involved. We do a science experiment to see if pumpkins sink or float, we do ten frames from the seeds, we stick letters to individual pumpkins, we count how many cubes tall our pumpkin is, we even do a sequence of the pumpkin life cycle on a 3-D paper pumpkin. So much fun and all in time for Halloween! I can't wait to show you our Pumpkin Olympics! Anywho, that's another blog post for another day.

I hope your classes are having as much fun as we are and your kids are enjoying the season too! 

Always remember: any moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole