Fall Pumpkins

I saw this idea on Pinterest and absolutely loved it! I was so excited to try it out this year and had a pretty good response. The idea was for students to create a pumpkin that looked like one of their favorite book characters. It fit so perfectly with Halloween and family reading night being in the same week! So, I sent home a packet with each student explaining the project. The packet included a cover letter explaining the project and that it was just for fun. I also included some examples, a card to fill out about the book character, a page to write a character description and a list of character traits to assist students in their writing. Here is the packet:

And finally.... the pumpkins!! Aren't they adorable??

Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon
This was the student choice winner, the mouth fell off...
apparently hot glue doesn't stick too well to spray paint.

Little Hedgehog... Teacher's choice winner!

Willy Wonka from
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory....
 love the hat and chalk nose! 

Huey from Oh Say Can you Say? Gottalove a good Dr. Suess!

Silverlicious....is this not the cutest thing you've seen?

I was so proud of all of the pumpkins! We had one more too but unfortunately I did not get a good picture..he paper mached (is that a word?) the hat and everything. 

 

And after a long week....this was our Friday night. You know your old when it's 6:45 on a Friday night and this is what you look like, remember when we used to stay up til 4 a.m.???? ha.

Narrative Elements

I think my favorite quote for teaching has to be "Beg, borrow, and steal!" I wish that I could be more creative, but I think it doesn't matter what I come up with, someone else has already done it better. But that is the beauty of teaching - teacher's love to share and I love to take! :)  The past couple weeks we have been teaching narrative elements and so to summarize what we had been learning we created narrative elements sandwiches. I stole this idea from a wonderful teacher Alyssa Blake. It was great to see the kids faces when they read "Create a sandwich" for their Reader's Workshop objectives, "Do we really get to make sandwiches?! Can we eat them?"

Narrative Elements Tacos!

My really amazing friend, Sarah Mancusi also did narrative elements only her class created tacos! Isn't Pinterest great for finding good ideas? I don't know how I would come up with anything fun without it. Anyway, Sarah used the book Come On, Rain! and so of course I did too. I LOVE this book! We were also able to use it again in writing to talk about good word choice. This book has fantastic word choice!

Mentos and Fruit Loops

Last Wednesday was quite the eventful day in our classroom. First off, we did a fun lesson on estimation. My friend and coworker Sarah came up with this fun activity to help students with the concept of estimation. First, we read the book Counting on Frank.

I then had students answer the questions in the back of the book in their math journals. We had fun solving the problems about Frank. I also created an anchor chart of ways we use estimation and why we would use estimation in that situation.

After reading the book, I passed out a piece of paper to the students in which they traced their hand. Each student then had to make an estimate on how many fruit loops would fit in his/her hand. After making their estimates I gave them each some fruit loops and they placed them in their hand and checked the accuracy of their estimates. You could also have them do a subtraction problem to see how far the actual count was from their estimate.

We also had our janitor, "Mr. John," trace his hand print and after the students had completed their hands, I showed them Mr. John's hand and had them make an estimate. We then counted out the fruit loops together for Mr. John's hand. It took quite a few fruit loops! 

In science we spent a week studying the scientific method. On Tuesday we did a science experiment on "dancing raisins". Students made predictions on what raisins would do when placed in sprite and then we watched what happened and recorded observations. The raisins at first will sink because they are denser than the soda, but then the bubbles attach making them buoyant and they float to the top. When the bubbles pop, the raisins sink again. On Wednesday, we did the famous coke and Mentos experiment! Everyone made predictions on what would happen when the Mentos were placed in water and what would happen when they were placed in Diet Coke. Then we took all 8 third grade classes outside and we first placed the Mentos in the water and observed and then came the Diet Coke. The kids loved it!! It was a very exciting day to say the least. 

Grandparent's Day

Well Grandparent's Day was a success. Everything went smoothly and the grandparent's loved the projects the kids had prepared. My favorite thing to do on Grandparent's Day is to read the Hello, Goodbye Window by Norton Jester to the kids and then have them create their own Hello Goodbye Window of their favorite activity with their grandparents. On Grandparent's Day I read the book to the kids and their grandparents and then the kids got to give their special windows to their grandparents. Here are a couple of the windows:

After reading the book, students interviewed their grandparents for a writing project we will get to later on how things were different when their grandparents were their age. They discovered ways to say grandma and grandpa in other languages and had fun sharing their fun acrostics:

 

And lastly, the students wrote why their grandparents deserve the name GRANDma or GRANDpa. I bought the page for this writing project from Julie Gesin on Teachers Pay Teachers...I LOVE that website!

Overall it was a successful day, I am already looking forward to Grandparent's Day next year! 

First Days of School

Well I am pretty new at this and I'm not sure how well I will keep up with it but I guess I'll give it a try! The first few weeks of school have flown by...I'm so excited about this year and all of the new faces in my classroom. I can tell it is going to be a fun year with lots of exciting things taking place. I decided to make a fun craft for parent orientation this year and so I made these for myself and a couple friends to hand out on orientation night. 

Here are a few pics of my new classroom set up as well....

                                      Our clip chart and writing materials.

                               Job Chart - our classroom is the "Green Gators"

                                Library and Book Nook that a friend made for me...
                                      it's my favorite part of the classroom!

                                     Computer station and objectives chart

                                                 Guided Reading Center

Well that is all for tonight. Grandparents Day is coming up Tuesday so I will be posting some pictures again soon.