Pumpkin Pancakes on Halloween Morning

We made pumpkin pancakes this morning!  We ate them with apple juice and bananas.  Here is a picture of the batter.  Look at all the patient first graders waiting to eat.

These are the pancakes on the griddle.

And these are the first graders who are eating the pancakes:

Everyone received a scary spider ring or plastic spider at the end of the day.  Here are some of the hand models:

Food Drive Findings

Yesterday was the last day of the food drive.  Thank you to everyone who participated.  I understand that not everyone is able to contribute.  We made a graph of the food that we collected.  We decided to sort the food by the type of container that the food is contained within:

Here is a picture of all of the food we collected.

Here is a picture of the student who worked very hard and collected all of the food from each classroom!

Thank you again for all of your help!

Seventeen Jackson Pollocks in Room Fifteen

Today we read Olivia by Ian Falconer.  Olivia is a headstrong little girl pig whose antics are well documented in several Olivia books.  Ian Falconer wrote the original book as a birthday gift to his niece.  In the book, Olivia visits a museum and views a painting by the renowned American artist, Jackson Pollock.  As you see in this post, he is famous for his splashy, drippy style of art.  Olivia sees one of his paintings in the musuem and says, "I could do that in five minutes."  We decided to give it a try.  Here are some photos.

Doesn't this look like fun?

Here are some of the creations.  They are all on display for parent teacher conferences.

This is a picture of the now deceased Jackson Pollock in action:

Apple Books

As part of our our study of apples, we made apple shaped books. The front covers of the books are woven colored strips of construction paper and have a worm made from a pipe cleaner sticking out.  The pages are an apple life cycle, two apple poems (including the one we learned at the field trip to Rocky Ridge), a cut away diagram of an apple, an apple words dictionary, and a page listing our favorite apple books.   The books will be on display at student conferences next week.

Right now the books are in their book baskets so that they can read them throughout the day. 

Wednesday is Guidance Day

Wednesday mornings bright and early Mrs. Brinkler comes to our room for a half an hour for guidance.  We are working very hard on communication skills, particularly communicating feelings without words by using gestures.   In this first picture, she said the word "broccoli" and  she and another student showed their feelings about broccoli without using words.

Here is how two students feel when they hear the words, "haunted house."

And two more students react to the words, "My friend won't play with you."

We are learning to express our feelings in many different ways.

It Was An Apple Butter Day!

      Today we tasted apple butter.  I picked up a jar from Cracker Barrel over the summer for $4.99.   It was a huge hit with 16/17 children asking for seconds! 

      We also wrote our thank you notes to Mr. Trippi for crafting our cubbies.  We used cardboard with lines drawn to represent the cubby shelves.  Each thank you note was two sentences long with the first sentence reading, "Thank you for the cubbies."  The second sentence was more descriptive - they had to add an original idea about why they liked the cubbies.  Finally, they had to draw a picture of their backpack located where their designated spot on the cubbies is and sign their name beside their backpack.   Here are some of the examples:

   

The Great Pumpkin Switch

Tomorrow we are going to read The Great Pumpkin Switch by Megan McDonald.  It's not often that I find a book that ties into my current curriculum as well as this book does.  The Great Pumpkin Switch is a story within a story told by the author's grandfather in the late 1920's, just before the Great Depression.  The grandfather tells a story from his childhood, the time that he and his friend do not listen to his mom's directions.  As a result, his sister's huge pumpkin rolls down 34 steps and goes, "Splat."  Their sister is growing the pumpkin to win a "badge" for what would be considered Girl Scouts in our time.  They decide to buy a pumpkin from the local pumpkin merchant and switch it.  But, they have to pay 20 pennies for it.   How do they pull this all off? 

Here are the many strands that tie this book to our curriculum:

-The boys are making apple butter by stirring it with a huge spoon when the book begins.  We are going to taste apple butter at snack tomorrow.  We have just finished a unit on apples. 

-The boys throw pennies into the apple butter, "so the apple butter won't stick to the bottom," like the  mom recommends.  We have just started learning about pennies.

-Today we are starting a unit on pumpkins and the book teaches about what pumpkins need to grow big.

-In Writer's Workshop, we are writing Small Moment Stories and specifically focusing on how good stories have problems with resolutions; well, there was a huge problem in The Great Pumpkin Switch.

Unfortunately, The Great Pumpkin Switch is no longer in print!  Bummer. . .

Food Drive

We are having a food drive at Dike Newell School.   The food drive has just begun and will end the Friday of parent teacher conferences, October 27.   Please send in any non-perishables to school with your child or you may drop anything off when you come for conferences.  We will be using the donations for counting and graphing activities in math in our classroom. 

We Made Apple Crisp Today. . .

And it was very tasty.

Here is the recipe:

We used Honey Crisp and Cortland apples for our apple crisp.  The pulp of the Honey Crisp is yellow and the Cortland pulp is white. 

Then, we put the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, butter, and oatmeal mixture on the top:

Next, Linda and Judy put the apple crisp in the oven in the school cafeteria.  Here they are:

We took it out and it smelled great!  Here it is:

Then, we all ate it with vanilla ice cream:

And, there was just a bit leftover:

It was delicious!

Raz-Kids Up And Running

Dear families,

Yesterday I sent home laminated log in directions for your child's page in Raz-kids.  I have just gone on line and viewed the report that the program will generate so that I can find out who is reading on line.  I am very impressed with the number of children who have spent time reading at their level over the past 24 hours!   A very special thank you to the parents and grandparents who have monitored their child and given them the opportunity to try out this program.  

Rocky Ridge Orchard Visit Today

We visited Rocky Ridge Orchard today.  We had a wonderful morning at the orchard.  We each learned an apple song and picked an apple.  We went on a scavenger hunt, watched a machine peel, core, and slice apples, read some apple stories, and picked out three pumpkins for our classroom.

These are the pumpkins we picked out and brought back to school:

This is an antique red car that we all liked:

This is the machine that cut, cored, and peeled the apples:

These are the two bags of apples that we are going to make applesauce out of next week:

This is Mr. Sprague.  He owns the orchard.  He helped Mrs. Sprague serve the apple crisp that we tasted.

This is Mrs. Sprague.  She took us into the orchard and taught us how to pick an apple.

These are pictures from inside the store where you can buy donuts, apple cider, apples, and home made bread.

Thank you to everyone who sent in donations so that we could buy some apples and pumpkins for the classroom.    Special thank yous to Mrs. Bryant, Mrs. Johnstone, and Mrs. Dever.  We had a wonderful day!