Pumpkins, Jack-O-Lanterns, and Red Ribbon Week! After bats and spiders comes pumpkins! I like to do lots of pumpkin things to get the kids ready for pumpkin palooza on Halloween. Here are some of the fun activities we have done with pumpkins so far this month!
We read "5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate" and then acted it out. So stinkin' cute and fun. The kids loved it. They would rehearse their line and then I would video tape it to post on our class page.
Since it was such a hit, the next day we did an extension activity to retell the story individually. This time I found a video of the story and the kids would move their pumpkins off of the gate. Some of the kids chose to glue their pumpkins on in the end, but some wanted to keep theirs loose so that they could go home and tell the story to their families.
We learned about the parts of a pumpkin and the life cycle of a pumpkin. The kids seem to find life cycles fascinating which makes it that much more fun to teach. They seemed shocked to discover that pumpkins start as a flower and then turn to a green pumpkin. We made our own life cycle strips. The kids ended up wanting to turn them into headbands lol so they wore them around the rest of the day. Turned out super cute.
I love taking pictures! And taking pictures with pumpkins always turn out adorbs! I had the kids do a tear art project to make a pumpkin practicing fine motor skills. They had a hard time giving up scissors for this activity haha but I said no scissors, just have fun and tear! We celebrated the color orange the day we took the pictures so they turned out extra perfect. I will save these for their memory books :)
My class this year struggles with recognizing their colors (not something I'm used to) so what better way to practice learning colors than through color by number or roll the dice.
After we learned some interesting facts about pumpkins, I encouraged the kids to write a sentence about a pumpkin. Some kids wrote informational sentences! I told them the only word I would give them was "pumpkin" and they had to try their best to write a sentence. I was so proud of them and amazed to see such great sentences.
Gotta love Red Ribbon Week! This year I was lucky enough to be able to play a big role in planning such an important event! Here is the dress up day flyer I made and so far participation has been amazing and super fun. Our school is keeping track of participating each day so that the winning class will receive a pizza party! woot woot!
And of course we have to add some drug free excitement and awareness around the school by decorating our doors to this years Red Ribbon Theme, "Your future is key, so stay drug free". This year we decorated our door with an ocean theme to match our classroom theme. The kids each wrote a word for our saying at the top "The key to my treasure is staying drug free, my future is what I want to be". So the kids decorated treasure chests and wrote what they want to be when they grow up! I must add, that quite a few want to be teachers :)
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