Dioramas and Pumpkin Centres

This week the Super Kids created their dioramas for their nocturnal animal projects.  Each diorama was to have the animal, shelter, food, and a water source.  The kids created a plan and a materials list before sharing their thoughts with their 3/4 buddies.  Our buddies came to help us with the plasticine and the results are wonderful!  The kids are so proud of their designs.

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On Friday, our class had pumpkin math centres.  Thank you to those families who brought in a pumpkin for this activity.  A big thank you to our two parent volunteers that joined us for the afternoon. We even had a Super Kid’s baby sister join us.  She is an honorary Super Kid now!  The class cycled through several pumpkin math activities that involved estimating and measuring.  Before we could get to our pumpkin centres in the afternoon, we had to get ready in the morning with a math warm up and an estimation lesson.  For morning work, the class was partnered up and given two nine sided dice.  They had to roll and add the numbers together.  This was complicated math for my grade one friends, but with the help of their grade two partners, they soon were counting up and excited to be doing “tricky math”.  The person with the most shaded pumpkins won.  This was a big hit!  The Super Kids even asked to play it on Halloween.

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After recess we talked about what estimation is and practiced this skill by estimating how many items were in a jar on each table.  The kids were so excited when they came close to the actual number.

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The pumpkin math centres were a lot of fun!  Our 3/4 buddies joined us for the first half hour of our centres before they had to leave for a presentation.  The class had to predict if a pumpkin would sink or flat, estimate and measure how many blocks tall a pumpkin was, estimate and measure how many creases were on a pumpkin, weigh a pumpkin, estimate by picking a string to measure the circumference of a pumpkin, and measure how many pumpkins tall they are.

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Do you like toasted pumpkin seeds?  We carved a couple of pumpkins that I brought in and decided to find out.  It was a mixed reaction. 🙂 We tallied if we liked or didn’t like them.  On Monday we’ll graph our findings.

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I snapped a few pictures of activities that the class picked for choice time. Some were adding numbers with dominoes, others were reading, and some decided to become pirates.  It has to be my favourite time of the day.  I enjoy listening to them interact with each other, cooperate, problem solve and get creative.

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Monday is Halloween!  We’re so excited for our classroom party, school parade, and they can’t wait to see what I’m going to be.  I wouldn’t tell them.  I’m sure it is going to be super..hint, hint. 🙂

 

 

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