Trick or Treating through Thanksgiving....

This is an ACTUAL discussion that we had in our morning meeting one day last week....

Ms. Amie says, " If we are singing our good morning song and somebody doesn't have a group, please let them into your group." 
Small Child says, "Yeah, and if everybody did that then everyone in the world could be happy and we'd all have a LOT of friends."

If only, my friend...if only.  (And I know I always say I'm working on World Peace in our classroom, but doesn't this prove it?)

So we did a little trick or treating at Millican Hall right here on the university.  It was a lot of fun and I'd like to PERSONALLY thank our photographer who took these amazing photos...since I forgot made a choice to leave our camera in the classroom....

We had our own election in EE5, as some of you already know.  We decided to avoid the negativity but help the children understand a little about the process of making a choice based on what you think.  Our candidates were Oreo and Chocolate Chip.  We had campaign posters and a debate where each candidate's representative could explain why we thought you should vote for each one.

We made a voting booth with a curtain for privacy because you can keep your vote secret if you want to....

Our volunteers at the polling station were very helpful.  Anyone could vote and we had visitors from other classrooms all morning.  

After voting, our campaign helpers gave each voter a sticker that said, "I voted in EE5!"  

As a side note, I was pretty sure I would have to station an adult  at the voting booth to help our volunteers guide the voters, but they were having NONE of that!  They took right over, kept things organized and moving and there was never a line waiting.  Amazing.   All in all it was a wonderful experience and a clean campaign.  (Chocolate chip won 38-36!)

Today I walked around a snapped a few pictures of what was going on....

I also want to let you know, that Mr. Oscar and I are VERY thankful to have these wonderful little people in our lives.  Thank you for sharing them with us!  We couldn't love them more!

October 24-28, 2016

We had a great week this week!  We did so much, and are REALLY looking forward to Monday, and Trick or Treating.

We set up this lovely invitation, with writing materials, books, pumpkins to inspect, pumpkin seeds, a book about the pumpkin life cycle, a magnifying glass and some little acrylic pumpkins to play with.  Imagine all the literacy and conversational opportunities that go along with a simple setup like this.  We can add to it based on the conversations we have with our friends, so it's a living representation of what our class is interested in.

We did some measuring this week, we measured how tall our pumpkins are...

 

We weighed them (with counting bears on the other side of the balance)...

 

 

We measured how big around the pumpkins are with yarn...

 

We found out if pumpkins sink or float...

 

 

We explored the inside of a couple of pumpkins.  How does it smell?

 

 

 

 How does it feel?

 

How does it look?

 

 

We finally carved it...

 

 

One of our goals is to always make learning visible.  Because of this, we have many different ways to document the learning that happens in our classroom.  One way that I love is to make a portfolio of each child's work for a LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME, that they can take home and show to mom and dad (and everyone else who will look).  We did this with our pumpkin investigations and it looks like this...  

On the back is some artwork that each child did with or about pumpkins.  Representing what we know is really showing what we have learned.

 

 

(Sorry it's sideways, I tried to fix it several times and there's only so much time I'm going to spend on something like that.)