Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving week was our time to finish preparing for our school holiday feast. We made cranberry relish for the big event. We peeled clementines, cut grapes and apples, and picked through cranberries. When all the fruit was prepped, Morah put it in a food processor with some sugar. We brought the relish in bowls to the playroom to set on the tables.

We finished our tzedaka jars by adding a layer of Mod Podge to the outsides to make them shiny. Each child wrote a sign saying “I give tzedaka” to tie around the jar. We placed these on the tables in the playroom as well so that families could give tzedaka during our Thanksgiving feast.

Finally, we were ready to celebrate with our family and friends. We sang our Thanksgiving song:

“Let’s Be Thankful” (To the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle”)
Let’s be thankful every day
For our friends and for our play
Let’s be thankful; let’s be glad
For our food and clothes we have
Let’s give thanks for you and me
And our home and family.

We watched our friends perform their songs and readings and then it was time to eat! The cranberry relish, sweet potato pie, pumpkin soup, and cornbread were all so delicious!

 

 

Thanksgiving Preparations!

We have been learning about the upcoming holiday of Thanksgiving, including the story of the first feast, how we celebrate today, and what it means to be thankful. We heard the story of the Pilgrims who left their homes in England, many many years ago, and traveled to America on the Mayflower. When they arrived, the weather was getting cold and they had no houses and little food. There were no hotels or supermarkets so they needed to work together to survive. They built shelter for the winter and gathered wood for fires to keep warm. The Native Americans showed them where to fish and how to grow new crops like corn and squash and beans. After the harvest, the Pilgrims were so thankful for their bounty that they had a big feast; they invited the Native Americans to show them how grateful they were for their help.

We too will be having a feast here in school and inviting our families. The classes worked together to make a school invitation featured in the lobby. Our class designed the menu with photos of the foods we will be serving and by writing the menu items. The Toddlers are making sweet potato pie; the 3s are baking cornbread; we are making cranberry relish; and the kindergarten is making pumpkin harvest soup. We have also been practicing a song about thankfulness to sing at our celebration!

To be thankful, we must take time to think about the many gifts in our lives. But even before we began thinking about what we are grateful for, we spoke about the difference between “needs” and “wants.” We need certain things to live healthy lives. We read a book comparing needs and wants, such as healthy foods vs. candy and a bed to sleep in vs. a tent to camp in.

We learned that some people do not have everything they need, and this is a reason why we give tzedaka. For Thanksgiving, we are making our own tzedaka boxes for our homes. These will be part of a special ongoing project. Through January we will be collecting tzedaka at home. Then we will bring our tzedaka boxes back to school to compile our money. We will use this money to take a field trip to the supermarket, where we will buy food for a family in need.

We are still working on our 3-D pumpkin display! This week, we created yellow and orange tissue paper flowers, working our fine motor muscles. We also painted little green pumpkins and finished paper mache-ing our bigger pumpkins which we will be painting orange. When all the steps are done, we will display our “pumpkin patch” outside our classroom!

Hands-On Learning!

We have been learning about “sink and float.” Morah asked what it means to “float” and to “sink.” “Float is when something stays on top of the water.”  “Sink is when it goes under the water on the bottom.” We thought of things we have observed floating including boats, water toys, balloons, and balls. We thought of things that would sink, including a couch, house, toy car, and comb.

We used our water table to conduct and “experiment,” a test to see what happens. We guessed which things would sink and which would float. We noticed that most of the metal things would sink. Some things would float for a while and then start to sink, including a piece of paper and a pine cone. Morah passed around the pine cone and the paper and asked if they felt different than when we put them in the water. The children noticed that they felt wet and heavy. Morah explained that water can soak into some things. When the water soaked into these things it made them heavier. Next week, we will be reading more about sink and float. We will make predictions about new objects based on our observations and reading.

We are creating 3-D timelines of a pumpkin growing from seed to fruit. This week, we cut out leaves for our vines and started working on our papier mache pumpkins. Everyone started with a round balloon balanced on a bowl. We mixed equal parts of flour and water together to make a gooey paste. We dipped newspaper strips in the mixture to wet them and then smoothed them onto the balloons. The children were very amused by the gooey feel of the papier mache and were very diligent about covering every part of the balloons.

 

Digital Camera

Pumpkin Seed Counting and Cooking

After cleaning the seeds out of our pumpkins last week and letting them dry, we were ready to count them. We worked together to count the seeds out onto cards in groups of 10. There were soooo many seeds from our big pumpkin! Morah helped us put 10 cards with 10 seeds each into a group and explained that this made 100 seeds. We counted how many groups of 100 we had. The last group was missing 3 seeds but we figured out that we ALMOST had 500 seeds!

The next day, we looked in our pumpkin books for the recipe for roasting pumpkin seeds. We decided to make 2 trays of seeds…one salty and one sweet. We spread our 500 seeds out onto the trays and mixed them with oil and salt and oil, sugar, and cinnamon.

We did a taste test to see which seeds we preferred. We recorded our answers on a graph. When everyone had answered we interpreted the results. We could see that 7 friends preferred sweet and only 2 preferred salty.

We chose one pumpkin to record information about. When we have finished recording our information, we will display it in our hallway.

What size is the pumpkin?

How many lines does the pumpkin have?

What does the inside look like? We created a diagram and labeled it.

We have been using our Pattern Blocks and Mats this week. Pattern blocks teach children about shapes and geometry, as well as develop their visual discrimination skills.