I'm home with the little one today, so as I'm holding her while she naps {anyone have ideas for a baby that HATES the crib??}, I made some little letter bingo cards we'll use at our party Thursday.

Hopefully, you can use these too! {click on the picture}


Fall is one of my favorite times of year {especially at school}, so we have been busy cramming in everything we can related to fall! We started learning about pumpkins last week and are having a blast.
First, we learned all about how pumpkins grow. We made a big anchor chart together then made individual life cycles with this super cute craft from my sweet friend Alisha {The Bubbly Blonde}.


We also used our own class pumpkin to do a little pumpkin investigation.
First we estimated the circumference of our pumpkin by pulling a piece of yarn to be how long around the pumpkin was. Then, we measured and two lucky kiddos estimated correctly! {You should have heard the cheers!}


Then, we estimated the weight of our pumpkin. We took it to the office to weigh on our data entry secretary's scales and while we were there, we weighed ourselves {umm...the kids did - no way in heck I was hopping on those things!}

Then, we went outside to cut our pumpkin open. The kids thought it was so cool! We thought of words that described the outside of the pumpkin and the inside of the pumpkin and charted them in different colors {love this idea from Cara!}


We also stayed busy reading lots of fiction stories about pumpkins to get in lots of Common Core standards.
We read Spookley {always a favorite} and charted his characteristics, then used our chart to write a describing sentence about Spookley.



Another one of our favorite stories was Too Many Pumpkins! It is such a cute book and perfect for working on beginning, middle, and end. I really tried to get the kids to work on the details in their pictures and I think they did great!

 Friday we read The Biggest Pumpkin Ever and compared the two main characters. This is a perfect book for meeting that standard of comparing characters within a text!
Today we read Big Pumpkin and talked about problem and solution...the kids loved this story as well!
We've also used pumpkins in our math with learning the number 9. We used our song about Pumpkins Fat and Round from last year and it has been so much fun to help us act our and decompose the number 9!


Last, but not least, the winner of Deeanna and my Spider packs is...
We'll be sending you your packs :)

Have a great, fun filled Halloween week friends!
Whew!! Last week definitely threw me for a loop! We had dress up days for the high school's homecoming, so it was a little crazy from the beginning.
Tuesday, we began learning all about spiders and had so much fun! We used this cute spider to chart our schema, new learning, and misconceptions.
We painted a small and large paper plate black to create a spider then carefully added 8 legs and 8 eyes. We added a new fact we learned to the center of the spider.
We also read The Very Busy Spider and sequenced the animals that came to visit the spider. We made sure to go back and check the book to make sure our sequencing was correct.  I let me kids write the word 'the' on the chart since it's one of our words we're working on. This is from my Fall Sequencing Pack. :)



 Wednesday, we went on a field trip to Landmark Park, which is an old farm, where the kids learn about agriculture and life in the past. We had a blast!
Then, when I got home, I found this pitiful baby burning up with a fever. A trip to urgent care, a flu test {which is horrible for a baby!!}, and a prescription for Tamiful later, we came home late Wednesday night and I had to miss school Thursday.
Why are sleeping babies the sweetest things ever???
Friday, I was able to go back to school, which was hectic since we had early release for homecoming. We managed to make our spider hats and eat a cute spider snack we made with 2 ritz crackers, peanut butter, pretzel sticks, and mini chocolate chips.


We also did lots of fun math with spiders from Deeanna's pack, but it was so crazy, I didn't snap any pictures.
If you're still planning your spider unit {or want to get some stuff for next year}, Deeanna and I would love to give away our spider packs. You can win her Spider Math and my Spider Language Arts Centers by making sure to follow both our blogs and leaving a comment below {make sure to leave your email!}.


We had Fall Break Monday and Tuesday of this week and although it was disappointing that the dang flu cancelled our plans, it was nice to have a break at home!! We're learning about pumpkins this week and I can't wait to share our fun!
I'm sure I'm preachin' to the choir when I say that life is cah-ra-zeeeeee!!! It seems like last year it was much easier for me to blog two or three times a week and this week I'm doing good to get one post written! I'm going to cut myself a *little* slack since I am having to learn how to use a new reading series and I have a little one is about to turn 1 {can you hear my crying!!}! I've been just a little pre-occupied with making her Halloween costume and figuring out her first birthday party. For what it's worth, here's what we did last week:
We learned all about firefighters and made these little guys to hold our tree maps.


We used firefighters to help us with our math {compliments of Deeanna}. We used our math stick to decompose the number 7, sang a song about 7 brave firemen to practice taking 1 away, and used manipulatives that firemen on one side and fire dogs on the other to decompose 7.


I often get asked how we have our kids doing these activities so early in the year. It's not easy to start, but since we start from the very start, by now, it's a breeze. The key is to model, model, model and do it TOGETHER! We always sit in circle around the rug and the kids have clipboards while we do the activities {except for the Firemen Drop - we modeled together then they went to their seat to do it independently}. This makes it easy for me to monitor who is getting it and who needs help. Here we are in action...

We also made our hexagon craft that we didn't get to the week before.
We also learned about the -at word family and made these cutie Halloween cats to hold our -at words.


This week we're learning all about Columbus and spiders. I didn't have exactly what I wanted for workshops {literacy centers}, so I made some spider themed ones this weekend to go along with what we're working on.
Matching uppercase and lowercase letters...
Stretching CVC words {I am determined to get some sensory in somehow, so I put our picture cards in pumpkin scented rice ;)}
Matching pictures to word families...this was for my higher groups and it was definitely a challenge, so we'll be working on it a while
Sorting nouns and verbs {they loved that they were able to use the words noun and verb correctly!}
Rolling sight words
And clipping beginning sounds
All of the centers above can be found in my new Spidery Centers pack on TpT.

We have a jam packed week ahead with homecoming dress up days, early release, and a trip to the pumpkin patch, so I'm not making any promised about when I'll blog again this week ;)
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