Welcome November!

It's hard to believe October is over and that we are heading into November.  The last two weeks we have been exploring pumpkins and leaves and all that fall has to offer.  The children have enjoyed art projects such as using stamps and paint to create spooky Halloween pictures.  Painting on black paper gives the work a completely different feel!  We have been learning how pumpkins grow from seeds to fruit, and the children colored and sequenced pictures of the life of a pumpkin.  We were amazed at how many seeds were inside our pumpkins and enjoyed toasting them and nibbling on them!  Our campus is covered with with beautiful fall leaves this time of year.  Wherever we walk, the children notice the different hues and the shapes of the leaves.  It's been fun using leaf identification tools to figure out which kind of tree our leaves came from.  Of course, the highlight of last week was our Halloween Parade!  How fun it was to dress up in different costumes and parade to a cheering crowd. Thank you to all of the parents who were able to come help the children get in costume and who joined us in the parade.  Many thanks as well for the special Halloween snack!

Life Skills - Connected and Respected 

In Life Skills we talked about the word "cooperation".  The children had heard this word before, and shared what they knew.  We talked as a group about what "cooperation" means - to work together as a team and to help one another out.  The children brainstormed ways we use cooperation at school - in the classroom, on the playground, etc.  Then we practiced using cooperation as we created a "spider web" by passing around a ball of yarn.  Each person had to hold on to part of the yarn for this to work, and the children shared ideas on how to work together.  In the end, we had a beautiful class web, with each person holding onto a piece.  

Curriculum Highlights...

* Language Arts - Letters and sounds - D /d/, F/f/, and G/ g/.  Slides with consonants and the vowel "a", creating three letter words by adding another consonant to the end of a slide, nonsense words, marking vowels.  Writing Workshop - What do you do when you get stuck? (Hint - remember the Little Engine That Could), adding more detail to writing and drawing, the "king of -ing"

 * Math - Finishing up Chapter 1 -  Combinations that make 5, the number zero, correct number formation. Beginning Chapter 2 - Comparing numbers - learning new vocabulary "same" and "greater than".  Patterns on the calendar and 100's chart. Pumpkin glyphs 

* Science - Pumpkins - cutting open the pumpkin, scooping out seeds and "goop", learning the life cycle of a pumpkin, sequencing the life of a pumpkin, looking at fall leaves, trying to identify the leaves we find.

* Social Studies - Roots - Chloe, Ava, George