Pumpkin Week in Pictures!

Say What?! A Monday evening post!

Yep - I am prepped and planned for the entire week, so I have some time to breathe! It feels nice, I must say.

I planned on writing a post this weekend on my hellacious week last week - with another FULL week of being alone with behavioral 1st and 2nd graders, but alas, the week is done, and I'm ready to move in. It was NOT a treat by anyways, but I survived. I think I'm stronger because of it.

However, I would love to show you some of the great moments of last week (or 2) in pictures:

Before our official "Pumpkin Week", we continued with our Autumn theme, by reading There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves.

We also focused on Acrostic Poems this week for our Poem of the Week (An Acrostic Spider Poem), so I decided, as a last minute, time-filler, we would make scarecrows from the story, and create an acrostic poem about leaves.

V is for Vroom- A Leaf Blower

Adorable right?

We also did a fun Spider Craft to pair with our Spider Poem!

I projected the instructions on the overhead for additional visual supports

Painting our plates

Fabulous finished product. Aren't they adorable?!

To start Pumpkin Week off right, I introduced The Five Little Pumpkins poem for our Poem of the Week. I didn't have any chart paper left (I've since received an order through Amazon!), I had to write the poem on sentence strips and display it in a pocket chart. It turned out to be a nice change for the kiddos.

We also made a fun craft from a previous Poem of the Week: Pumpkin, Pumpkin. This super adorable craft is from Rhonda Baldacchino at Classroom Fun (plus it is FREE!). It was even more fun for our students, because they were already familiar with the poem, and and done several tasks with the words. This was a more hands-on, creative activity to do with the poem!

Then...I introduced the pumpkin!

We sat on the rug and discussed what we saw

Then we discussed what it felt like

And then, how it sounds

Here, I'm writing down some suggestions to name our pumpkin. Big Bertha Jack won!

My wonderful, class. Our Anchor Chart was much more full after our discussion...just take a look below...

Measuring our pumpkin's circumference with paperclips!

Our Pumpkin Exploration Table!

Close up of our mini pocket chart!

Close up of Big Bertha Jack and Mini

We finally get our hands dirty...

Gloves! Of course...

Yuck! Rotten Pumpkin!

And now, for our beautiful Pumpkin Anchor Chart...

A'int she a beaut?

I got the idea for this Anchor Chart set-up from Nicole Ricca at Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten. Another fabulous freebie!

And, non-pumpkin related - I made a new bulletin board! Sort of by accident though. I wanted to create a Reading Strategies Poster to complement my Journey's Curriculum instruction. However, after I created these images and words on my computer last night and printed them, I realized they were WAY too big for the chart paper I wanted to put them on! So instead of wasting more paper and ink (which I am not provided by my school), I decided to create a bulletin board instead!

Tomorrow I will be introducing each strategy to my students during morning meeting. We will spend one week for each strategy practicing it during morning meeting, and any other opportunities during the day.

Too busy? I think it's pretty visually stimulating, but it will do for now.

That's all for now! I'm headed to bed soon (after the Sox game of course...)