Pumpkins!

The past two weeks we have been learning about the letter Pp and of course PUMPKINS!  We started off our unit with learning how pumpkins grow.  We discussed about the seeds inside and how we plant them, then need to take care of them so we can have a big Pumpkin to carve at Halloween.  We compared pumpkins from small to big, by color coding them.  We continued learning about the letter Pp and pumpkins through out the week - we even patterned pumpkins to make a letter P! 

The following week we continued our pumpkin week by learning about the insides of the pumpkins and how each pumpkin is different from another.   We cut open pumpkins to feel in the insides and collect the seeds.  (Sorry no pictures, I was involved with digging out seeds)  When we were all done we collect our seeds in bowls (one for each pumpkin), and compared the amount of seeds from each pumpkin. 


Why not learn about the letter P and pumpkins while have a Pajama Party!!! On Wednesday we had a pajama party while we learned about our pumpkins!  Here are some pictures of that day!

 

 

Also durning that day, we made our own pumpkins! We frosted cookies with orange frosting, added the eyes, stem and mouth. Here are some pictures.

 

 

 Of course the best part was to eat the frosting after we were done decorating!

 

The finished product!

 

 

Here are some of the art work that we did that day.  We tore pieces of constuction paper, to work on fine motor, and glue the pieces to form a pumpkin.  

 

 

Community Helpers

The first two weeks of October we learned about our community helpers.  We learned the letters Hh, Oo, the number 3, the color orange and the shape rectangle during those two weeks.  We started off our community helpers unit by learning about the trash man!  What made it even better during that day, was that the school's trash man stopped by to pick up our trash and of course we had to stop what we were doing and go out to watch him!  We talked about how he helps clean up our town and how it's important to always throw our trash away.  We had 'trash' olympics that day for our circle time.   We also made a Handy trashman Helper that day that was made out of trash (sorry no pictures). 


The next community helper we learned about was a police officer.  We learned a new game, Red light, Green light, which taught us what those colors mean when we see them while driving.  We made a police car out of rectangles and drew our own police officer.  We also made a stop light made of corn syrup.  You mix corn syrup and food coloring together.  It was VERY sticky, but they enjoyed the texture!  Here is a picture of our corn syrup stop light. We had to add glitter to make it sparkly!

The next community helper (we learned a total of 4) we leanred about was a firefighter!   We talked about the job the firefighter has.  Since it was also fire safety week, we learned about how to be safe when it comes to matches, to stop, drop and roll and also how to dial 911 for an emergency.  For our large group activity, we went outside (bad day for this activity because of course it was the coldest day of the week, but we still had fun) and drew 'fire' on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk.  We talked about what firefighters do to put out a fire.  They use WATER! That is exactly what we did! We took spray bottles and sprayed out our fire!  When we came back inside we made a firetruck out of rectangles and drew our own firefighter.

The last community helper we learned about was a doctor.  We discussed how doctors make us feel better and how they aren't scary.  What a better way to help show doctors are good people, is to dress up and be a doctor!  I went out and bought doctor masks, rubber gloves, colorful bandages, tape and some pre-wrap.  We played doctor with each other.  Here are some pictures of the fun we had! (The other person pictured with the preschooler is my para Miss Reed!  She is an amazing lady!)

Apple Day!

It's apple week!! To start off apple week, we learned about how apples grow and how there are so many different types of apples! Of course Johnny Appleseed day fell into our apple unit, so why not learn about him!  We learned how Johnny Appleseed planted apple trees all over to give us the apples we eat today. To end our Johnny Appleseed day, we watched a movie about him! They enjoyed watching the movie!
During our week long apple unit, we also taste tested some apples! We taste tested green, red and yellow Apples (letter of the week was of course the letter Aa!). The preschoolers got to choose the apple they like the most and color it's correct color on our apple sheet as well as our class apple graph.
One of the art projects we did this week was to make apple cores! We painted our apples and leaf. We then dotted brown seeds into the middle of our apple!

We finished our apple unit by making our own apple trees! We used green frosting, graham crackers and Twizzler Nibs for our apples. It was a very messy but yet a FUN activity! They liked spreading their own frosting, but I think their best part was they got to eat some of their left over frosting!  Below are some pictures of decorating their apple trees as well as the finished product.