Gingerbread Fun...

Wow! Gingerbread House building is tough work.  I'm so glad we had so many wonderful parents here to help out with this project.  Although we had a few catastrophes, there were many MORE smiles, laughs and happy conversations.  And the kids have plenty of icing, candy and sugar residue on their uniforms to prove that it was a fun event. Your kids ROCK and so do YOU!  Here's a little glimpse into our creative morning:

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I am SO THANKFUL for each of you and all you give to make our classroom a fun and happy place.  Thank for all of the contributions to make today go well.  

More Thanksgiving FUN!

Here's our Native American Pow Wow Celebration in class...A BIG "thank you" to every parent who helped make this a successful and fun day.

ENJOY!

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Thanksgiving Memories and "Fruit Salad Fun"!

Today we shared our amazing family turkeys (see them in the slide show) and we made "Friendship Fruit Salad" with Grandma and Grandpa Nations!

The kids LOVE it when these two come into our classroom---shoot, they love it when any of you come into our classroom.  Since Grandpa spent the better part of the weekend editing and reviewing a paper that I had to write, I promised him he'd have MORE FUN in Kindergarten making fruit salad!

Today we all brought in some fruit to share. We used a simple recipe and we made fruit salad during center time. Here are some pictures of that fun followed by a slide show of some of the family turkeys and amazing family photos from our pie and cookie feast on Friday.I cannot say enough how thankful I am for EACH OF YOU and your amazing learners!! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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Pumpkin Celebration...

Check out the fun from our Pumpkin Celebration day.  A BIG thank you to all of the parents who came in and helped make our day so special.  Enjoy your sweet kiddos and all the learning they did while they played and experimented.

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Pumpkin Soup and Pumpkin Rolling...

Welcome to Pumpkin Soup Day!  We read the book Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper:  

We had a lot of fun chopping up the ingredients and preparing our soup.  We used Sweet Potatoes:  

We cut up garlic and onions---which had a few of the kids tearing up!

And we chopped up pumpkins.  I don't really think "chopped up" is the right word here.  These pumpkins were NEARLY impossible to cut!  We tried several knives and ended up relying mostly on strong muscles to get into them.  It was unbelievable just how difficult this step was!We also peeled the sweet potatoes.  

 Then we chopped our sweet potatoes.

 And we scooped out the pumpkins (once they were open).

 Then we softened the sweet potatoes in the microwave and mashed them a bit.

 While the soup cooked in the crock pots, we went outside to work on our science experiment.  We rolled three different sized pumpkins down the playground slide.  We guessed that the largest one would roll the furthest.

 We tried each of the pumpkins three times and measured and recorded the data.

 Can you believe that the small and large pumpkin BOTH rolled the same distance?

 We tried it again just to be sure.

 Yep.  It was VERY close each time.

 When we returned to our room, the soup looked like this:

 So we had to use the blender to puree it:

 And then it looked like this:

 When we tasted it, some of us added a dollop of sour cream to it.  And others added a teaspoon of brown sugar.

 Several of the kids liked it, but many did not.  We talked about the fact that sometimes you have to tweak a recipe to make it better.  And we also talked about the fact that our taste buds change as we get older, so we might like it today, but sometime in the future, that could change.  All in all, it was an extremely busy and productive day!!