Pumpkins and Spiders and Halloween oh my!!!!!!!!!!!

The last two weeks pumpkins, spiders, and Halloween have been the center of our attention. We have learned a lot of information and enjoyed the excitement that comes with pretending to be another person.

A little pre-Halloween dress up.

Surely no one could deny them a treat.

On rainy days we still get our exercise by moving like the animals do.

It was fun to sit on this giant web and look at the big book about spiders. We learned that many spiders are helpful to us because they eat other insects.

They wanted to cover his bald spots.

The latest in scary styles


Time to relax with a good book.

We're proud of our accomplishments. We each planted a pumpkin seed in the hope that it will grow over the winter and our decorated pumpkin which was a team effort.

One way to give our pumpkins features was by adding pattern blocks. This way friends could have twin pumpkins. It was a great activity for shaped recognition.

Mr. Pumpkin Head could be happy, sad, or scary depending on its creator.

This matching game was pretty tricky. Those individuals that could master it deserved a great big treat!!!!!!

We really didn't mind getting our hands down inside the pumpkin. Lots of descriptive words for the pulp like gooey and slimy.

Stuffing and painting our bag pumpkins took a lot of co-ordination to hold them with one hand and paint with the other.

APPLES, APPLES, APPLES!!!!!!!

Our apple themed weeks provided opportunities for our children to munch, paint, lace, tissue paper, dissect, play games, and learn about apples.



Before we made our own diagrams of apples, we watched Ms Angela point out the various parts of the apple.




Where's a house with no doors or windows and a star inside? We discovered it was inside an apple.




Look at the apple that I laced up all by myself. I can sew!!!!!!!!!




These colorful apples look like stained glass when held up to the sun light.




Matching capitals with lower case letters kept these girls interested in the big and little apples.



Students really enjoyed an apple relay game where cooperative play was a must. They also played another game with apples. It was hot apple instead of hot potato.

Now that Fall has finally arrived, we can work our seasonal sequence puzzles.

Ms. Lois came in and showed pictures and told stories about her trips to Romania. We found out what we can do to help.

We made firefighter puppets to pretend we were putting out the fires.

Thanks to the Lafayette Township Fire Department for talking to us and sharing information about what firefighters do. We even got to sit up in the real firetruck.

PET WEEK

Dogs, cats, fish, and hamsters were all part of our pet theme this week. We had some live visitors to add to the excitement of the room and we learned how to take care of our pets.



At the end of our week, it appears that dog is still kid's best friend.

Ms Angela showed us pictures of pets. They were sooooooo cute.

Our neighbor, Dr. Allen, a veterinarian from his practice at Hillside Animal Clinic visited us on Wed. with two of his dogs. Thank-you Dr. Allen for sharing your dogs with us.

One of our teacher friends brought in her exotic pet, a glider sugar bear. We were thankful to her for the opportunity to learn and touch her pet.

This week one of our stories was called Newton and Me. It was about the love of a little boy for his dog and their experiences. The science concepts of push , pull, and force were introduced. The day after we read it, we wanted to see if the dominoe effect worked like the book. It did. Hooray!!!!!!!!

This student is jumping on the ever favorite Hopscotch board. Children never seem to tire of it. What a wonderful exercise in gross motor skills, number recognition, and sequence.