Mrs. Hannah's Kinder-Prep: Pumpkins

It was a busy and fun-filled week last week when we studied pumpkins! We were able to poke holes in pumpkins to make shapes like a geoboard, hammer tees into pumpkins with toy hammers, watch Mrs. Hannah carve a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern, watch an experiment with candy pumpkins, and even paint our own small pumpkins too. We studied how pumpkins grow, and even got to see the inside seeds and "guts" of the pumpkins too. We made some great predictions on whether a big or small pumpkin would sink or float in water, and we even weighed them to see how heavy they actually were. So much fun! In the midst of this, we talked a lot about letter "C" and the number 6 as well. We have certainly been busy, so I hope you enjoy all the pics!

This is the Way We Carve a Pumpkin - Super Simple Songs

Storybots Letter "C" Song

We started off the week with an experiment with candy pumpkins. We put one hard candy pumpkin in oil, one in water, one in white vinegar, and then one milk to see which candy pumpkins would dissolve first. These kiddos made some great predictions of what they thought would happen and why. We waited a few hours until the end of class to observe to see what happened and to see if any of our predictions were correct.

We discovered that the candy pumpkin dissolved in each one except the oil. In the vinegar and water, you could actually see the white sugar coating floating in the water from the outside of the pumpkin. The milk just turned orange and dissolved the pumpkin. So interesting!

We did a combination activity to study our letter "C" and number 7 skills. We traced them, counted them, and hunted for them on our paper. We're starting to write our names more independently, so encourage them to work on this as much as possible at home too. :)

Mrs. Andrea helped us explore pumpkins even more by helping us do a pumpkin investigation. We measured it with Unifex cubes to see how tall it was. Then, we counted to see how many lines were around it. We also drew a picture of what it looked like as well.

We worked on tracing our numbers 1-10 with markers. We're really trying to get that good pencil grip to help with writing our name, drawing pictures and writing numbers.

Mrs. Andrea also helped us learn how a pumpkin grows from seed to vine to pumpkin. We cut out the pictures and put them in sequential order. This required cutting and gluing and LOTS of listening. :) We also painted our own mini pumpkins this week too!

We practiced writing our letter "C" and number 6 on dry erase boards for practice.

We used watercolors to paint our pumpkin pictures too.

We weighed our big pumpkin to see how big it was.

We compared it to the weight of our small pumpkin.

We predicted whether or not our small and big pumpkins would float or not.

Our large pumpkin didn't float.

However, we found out that our small pumpkin DID float!

We got to see and feel the inside of a pumpkin and pull out all the seeds.

We also got to hammer small golf tees into our pumpkin with toy hammers.

After weighing, measuring, and "sinking" our pumpkin, we decided to carve it to make a jack-o-lantern.

We looked inside to see all the pumpkin "guts".

After carving a face,...

...we finally end up with a jack-o-lantern!

After putting a flashlight inside, we can see it light up in our classroom. This was a great connection to our Bible verse this week too about letting our light shine so that others know that we love God. :)

We brought in letter "C" items for our ten frame Show and Tell this week.

We had 1 cup and car.

We had 2 crabs.

We had 2 cats.

We had 1 collar for a dog.

We had 1 Captain America.

We had 2 cups.

We had 1 cape.

We had 3 cars.

We had 2 cupcakes.

We had 1 Chelsea doll with a cupcake dress.

We had 1 candy cane.

We also had a lot of friends who were able to share their pumpkin crafts that they made over Fall Break. They turned out so cute! Check them out in the hallway.

Mrs. Andrea read a special story to us about the pumpkin parable. So sweet!

As usual, playtime is the best time!

We enjoyed playing on our new teeter totter this week outside. Because of all the donations from our Trike-a-thon fundraiser, we were able to afford some new items for our playground and extend our area a little bit out back too!