Five for Fraturday ~ Pumpkins Everywhere!

Well it is finally starting to feel like fall.  I just love this time of year.  Cool mornings and evenings, warm afternoons, leaves changing colors and of course, Starbucks Pumpkin Spice...lol.  This week I am joining in on one of my favorite linky's Doodle Bugs Five For Friday Fraturday. 

This week we dove into our unit on pumpkins. It is one of my favorites.There are just so many opportunities for fun learning. Here is what went down this week.

First up our focus wall for this week. We are making such great progress and I am super proud of my kiddos.  Here are our circle maps from the week. We really rocked the "Tt" chart.  The kiddos thought of more words than I could fit on our chart.

We are moving right along with our sight words as well.  75% of my kiddos have mastered our first list, the Baseball words and are so excited to move on to Soccer words.  They ask to practice their "ball words" whenever they finish early.  It makes my heart happy that they are so eager to learn.  I am working on a post all about how we learn sight words, so stay tuned.

Another win we had this week is, 12 of my 18 kiddos have made it to the Top Banana Club.

To make it into the club they have to identify all of the upper case and lower case letters and their sounds, as well as write the upper and lower case letters in order with out looking at the alphabet wall.  

This may not sound like much, but in our rural area there is no preschool.  So my kiddos have had no school experience when they come to me.  I will admit that 7 of my kiddos are back this year as they were my TK's last year, they were still 4 when they started school.  In addition, when they did come to me last year they didn't speak English so not only have they made huge progress on their skills, but they are making great strides in learning English as well.  

Do you have any fun achievement clubs in your room?? 

We started the week by reading several books about pumpkins.  These are just a few of the titles we read...

Our Poem this week is a fun little ditty about Pumpkins on the Gate, of course.  This is from Deanna Jump's  Pumpkin Palooza Unit.  We also created an Anchor chart about the outside characteristics of a pumpkin.

Next we completed a craftivity about the life cycle of a pumpkin.  I had major teacher fail...I was taking pics up a storm of them working on this project only to discover, after school when I went to look at the pictures, that there was NO memory card in my camera...all I could do was shake my head and laugh. So I snapped a few pics of the finished product.

They did a great job and they look super cute displayed on our window sills. If you like this activity you can find it from Robin Sellers here.

On Thursday we took a field trip to the pumpkin patch.  They had a fantastic time of learning and fun.  We had a hay ride, heard a story about the farm, played in the corn pit, (a class favorite), then took a walk in the "forest" and the corn maze. Finally we heard all about how pumpkins grow from farmer Billy Bob and then we chose our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch.

When we got back we did a little writing all about our filed trip. This great little activity is a freebie from Elizabeth Hall at Kickin it in Kindergarten. 

We completed the top half of the paper together.  They would sound out the words and tell me what sounds they heard to write on the board.  Then for the "My favorite part..." they completed it all on their own.  For my low students I told them to just draw the picture and any sounds they could hear to tell me about their picture.  They all did a fantastic job.

Next week we will have part 2 all about pumpkins with a full day of experiments. The kiddos can't wait.

Yesterday was our 22nd Wedding Anniversary.  The hubby and I started going steady my senior year in high school on October 24th, six years later we got married on that same day.  Don't do the math...just don't...I am old I know. It seems weird to think that we have spent more years of our life together than not.

You can tell it was the early 90's by the hair and dress...lol.  It hasn't all been a bed of roses but being best friends has made it all worth it and I wouldn't change a thing.  In honor of our special day I am offering 20% off at my tpt store this weekend to celebrate.

What were you up to this week?  I would love to hear all about it. Enjoy your weekend!

~Laura