October has flown by with a lot of fun, rain and pumpkins. Even with all the rain days we had, students have been able to learn a lot. This month we had the cultural arts fair, pumpkin experiments, red ribbon week, and storybook character day.
Cultural Arts Fair
The cultural arts fair was October 16th. The kids were able to participate in many PTA sponsored activities. There was an obstacle course where students had to complete small continent related challenges. Students participated in 3 Spanish dances lead by Senora Daehler, the school's Spanish teacher. They were also able to create their own boomerangs with our art teacher Mrs. Florencio.
On this day our class was fortunate to have Mrs. Sanford come into our class to teach us about Japan. She showed students maps of Japan, pointing out the mountains. She showed students pictures and taught them how to create an origami pumpkin! It was a lot of fun and learning packed into one school day.
Pumpkins
In October we learned about pumpkins in science. Students learned about the pumpkin life cycle, the parts of the pumpkin, and many important facts about pumpkins.
We started the unit off by writing down all that we knew about pumpkins (on the orange post-it notes) then at the end of the unit we wrote down all the new things we learned (on the yellow post-it notes).
After learning about pumpkins it was time to explore a pumpkin! We took all the pulp out of a pumpkin and then used magnifying glasses to examine the pulp and the seeds.
We started the unit off by writing down all that we knew about pumpkins (on the orange post-it notes) then at the end of the unit we wrote down all the new things we learned (on the yellow post-it notes).
After learning about pumpkins it was time to explore a pumpkin! We took all the pulp out of a pumpkin and then used magnifying glasses to examine the pulp and the seeds.
To practice making predictions we completed a candy pumpkin experiment. Before the experiment students made predictions about what would happen when the candy pumpkin was placed in water. Next each student got one candy corn pumpkin. Then we put them in water and observed what happened. At first we did not notice any change, but after 5 minutes it started to get interesting! The pumpkins were shrinking, changing shape, loosing their color, or had a white coating form on the outside. The kids were very excited to see all the changes. After the experiment was over we reviewed our predictions and we recorded what we observed.
Fall Tree Painting
This month was also the start of clubs, our first club was art club. For art club this month students used pencil erasers to paint a fall tree! The kids loved using something other than brushes to paint!
This month was very exciting and full of activities that helped us learn many new things. After this month I cannot wait for November!!
