Twas' two days before Halloween...

One of the first things I heard this morning was an excited announcement from a five year old that there is today, then one more day, and then it's Halloween! As soon as we started talking about fall, about a month ago, my students have been talking about Halloween on a daily basis. So, today we began our last week of our pumpkin observations. We read the book Pumpkin Hill. Then, student's continued with our routine of drawing their pumpkins and then taking a photo (which we later paste into their observation books).


The 2 green pumpkins were 'replacements' for pumpkins that
froze and were getting a little too squishy.

We also did a spooky sound effects story, but they really wanted to act out a story. So, we did some choral poetry about Halloween that they could act out. By request, we also acted out the story
  Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? I also introduced an emergent reader, Orange Pumpkin, Orange Pumpkin, which follows the same pattern. Students then coloured their books and practiced reading them to me when they finished. They also had extra Halloween colouring sheets to work on today and each student completed a worksheet that showed what they will be for Halloween. I think I'll make a book out of those ones~ so stay posted for the final product!

We also continued our work on extending patterns. Students completed a cut and paste activity to extend patterns and then created patterns by colouring Halloween characters.

 

 

Other highlights of our day included practicing throwing and catching balls in the gym, reading A Case of the Stripes by David Shannon, eating yummy pumpkin chocolate chip muffins courtesy of the SCC (thank you!), and having our own D.E.A.R time for about ten minutes (students reading individually or with a partner). My students love books and literacy, which makes me so happy! Even when they have a choice to explore whatever they want in our classroom, most of them choose to spend their time practicing writing letters and words on the white board and playing their favourite literacy games together. They make me proud every day! :)