Sunday, October 13, 2013

Letter "P," Pumpkins, & Transportation

This week we focused on the letter "P" and what's more exciting than to have our first field trip to the "P"umpkin "P"atch. During our circle time we brainstormed words that started with the letter "P" and below is the list we came up with. I was blown away at some of the words our class thought of and we kept adding more as the week went on.


Decorating the letter "P" using the colors "P"urple and "P"ink and gluing on "P"om "P"oms.





Our light table is a great place for our children to work in a different way with our letters.


We noticed that the big "P" and little "p" look the same.


The letter "P" was weaved into most of our activities this week including "P"umpkin "P"rints.


Playing with the "P"arking garage.


Making "P"uzzles.


Even in gymnastics Teacher Tatiana taught us how to do "P"ull ups and we had fun with the "P"arachute.








Observing and drawing pumpkins into our journals.


We noticed the different parts of the pumpkin, and some of us drew our own pumpkin patch with small and big pumpkins in it. Some of us even added a scarecrow to our drawings.


"P"ainting orange on our fists to make a "P"umpkin "P"rint.


We were so excited to see inside of our HUGE pumpkin.


It took us a couple big pulls to get the top off.


We were so curious and filled with excitement to see inside.


WOW!


We figured out that our hands were the best tool to use to take the seeds out.


Getting all the seeds out is a messy job :)


Washing the pumpkin seeds.


Before we opened our huge pumpkin we all made an educated guess on how many seeds were inside.


We counted the seeds in groups of ten. We practiced counting forwards 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...10 and also backwards 10, 9, 8, 7, 6....1.


We talked about estimating how many seeds were inside our pumpkin. Some of our guesses were 2, 3, 9, 5, 4, 10, 20, 75, 120, and the biggest guess was 100,050,000. The final pumpkin seed count was 661. Wow! We couldn't believe it!


We put olive oil and a little bit of salt on our pumpkin seeds and baked them.


When our seeds were done baking we had a "P"icnic outside. They were yummy!

Our class is still interested in transportation, and as we talked about the field trip and driving there, the topic of school buses came up. So we decided to make our own buses.








After our buses dried we glued on wheels made of wood chips that we painted black, and we also glued on head lights and brake lights too.

In PreK we are continuing to review our shapes and how to hold our pencils correctly. Teacher Karen is always so full of life and enthusiasm as we sit down for our community time and discuss many topics and read stories.





It was a fun-filled week and our class was soo thrilled by the Pumpkin Patch that they decided to play Pumpkin Patch in our classroom. They knew exactly which pumpkin was theirs and were talking to each other about how to safely carry their pumpkins.


Thanks for an awesome week!

Hugs,

Teacher Kristina