Describing Pumpkins

Today we finished up our pumpkin unit by reading The Bumpy Pumpkin. This is a great book to teach adjectives! After reading we did some brainstorming of words that could describe a pumpkin and made a list.

As an extension to this lesson, each student created their own "bumpy pumpkin" using crazy scissors. After they put their pumpkin together they were asked to write 3 clues describing their pumpkin. We talked about what makes a good clue and how you have to use describing words to differentiate your pumpkin from someone else's. They totally got the concept:

Tomorrow is our field trip to Dewberry Farm and we all cannot wait! Should be an extremely fun day!

Pumpkin Day!

Yesterday was Pumpkin Day in first grade! I absolutely LOVE pumpkin day; it's so much fun for the kids every year!

This year we started off our morning by carving our big class pumpkin. We sat in a giant circle on the carpet and the kids helped me figure out the order of steps I would need to take to carve it. It was obvious quite of a few of them had some schema on this subject, because they knew exactly what to do. We took off the top, checked out the goop inside, cleaned out the pumpkin, carved a face, and then lit it up using battery powered tea candles.

After we had gone through the steps to carve the pumpkin, I challenged students to use a flow map to record the steps we took. I encouraged them to use the words first, next, then, and last to help them describe the order.

Once students had a completed flow map, I gave them a piece of handwriting paper to transfer their work. Thus they created a how to paragraph on carving a pumpkin.

To finish things off students used their watercolors to paint a pumpkin. Their paintings turned out fabulous! I love any day at school that we get to paint. Everyone works so hard and their work turns out amazing every time.

Once the paintings were dry we put all the pieces together. Here is an example of the finished product:

When the students went to Ms. Coburn's class in the afternoon they got to use their own mini pumpkins to do a variety of pumpkin day activities such as a sink or float experiment, measuring, and comparing. What a fun day in first grade!

Spookley the Square Pumpkin

On Tuesday we read one of my favorite pumpkin stories: Spookley The Square Pumpkin! If you haven't read this book before, it's an adorable story about a square pumpkin that doesn't fit in with all the round pumpkins. One day there is a huge storm and a hole is torn in the fence. Round pumpkins are rolling out the hole into the sea until Spookley wiggles himself over to the hole and blocks it. Because he is square, he does not roll out the opening. It's a great story to teach the concept that everyone is unique and has their own talents to share with others.

After reading the story we made connections to the story by making a class book. Each student had to design their own creative pumpkin and write one sentence describing something about it. Their pages turned out so cute it was hard to choose just a few to share here.

 a heart pumpkin

a skyscraper pumpkin 

a gingerbread man pumpkin 

 a candy corn pumpkin

a bat pumpkin

Pumpkin Brace Map

Today we started our week long unit on pumpkins. We started out the week reading a nonfiction book about the life cycle of a pumpkin. The book was a simple text that described the different parts of a pumpkin as it goes through it's life cycle. I used this opportunity to introduce the students to the brace map. A brace map is a thinking map that is used to show parts of a whole. We made these cute parts of a pumpkin brace maps using construction paper to demonstrate our learning.

Just a quick reminder that tomorrow is the last day to send in the tiny pumpkin to be used for Pumpkin Day. If your child has not already brought their pumpkin to school please make sure they have it tomorrow. The pumpkin must be a handheld size as in the image below. Thanks!