Halloween Parade and Party!

We had our Halloween parade and party today. First, we did the parade. We walked from our school to a nursing home about 3 blocks away. We walked through the nursing home and then came back to our school for the party. A student's mother made us some dirt and body parts in a cup (Oreo cookies, pudding, and gummy body parts) for a treat. They absolutely loved it! Then, we decorated paper plates with colored cotton balls, stickers, foam stickers, and glitter glue. Afterwords, we watched a Garfield Halloween movie. We had a terrific time! Thank you to all of the parents who helped out and donated items for our party. This really made it very special. Happy Halloween!

The group picture

The group picture including me

During the parade

Enjoying the "dirt" desert







Decorating the plates

Cute Moment!

For the last few minutes of each reading group, I gave the students a chance to write on white boards. I decided to let them write or draw whatever they wanted, as a reward for doing such a good job completing their animated alphabet sheet. I was amazed to see that all of the students in this group wanted to write the whole alphabet, instead of drawing. Of course, I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped a picture of it.

Pumpkin Carving!

Today, we carved a pumpkin. First, I cut off the top of the pumpkin. Then, every student got a chance to pull out a handful of seeds. Afterwords, we voted on each part of the pumpkin (the eyes, nose, and mouth). For example, I would give them three choices for the eyes: triangles, circles, or moons. Then, we would tally the votes. The one with the most tallies won. In the end, the students also decided the pumpkin needed eyebrows. After the pumpkin was carved, we put a candle in the pumpkin and turned off all of the lights in the room.

Miss Ripperger picking out the pumpkin at the patch

Digging out the seeds





The students posing with the carved pumpkin

Another Birthday and Study Buddy Fun!

Today, we celebrated another birthday. He brought delicious cupcakes as a treat. Since it's Friday, we also had study buddies. They made a pumpkin glyph with their study buddies. The glyph had questions like, "Do you like pumpkin pie?" If the answer was yes, they would glue a smile onto their pumpkin. If the answer was no, they glued on a scary face to their pumpkin. Of course, every one had different answers to the questions, so the pumpkins turned out to be very unique.

Making their pumpkins with their study buddies



Two of the groups enjoying their cupcakes



The birthday boy! Happy birthday J!

A Visit from T-West High School Students

We had 2 high school students from Topeka West High School come to our class and read some Halloween stories to us. These students are a part of the National Honor Society and decided to donate their time to read to our class. They read some very good stories. Later we played a game called, "Domino Concentration" in Math. It's a lot like the game Memory. The students worked in partners. Each student took turns flipping over a domino and a number card. They counted the number of dots on the domino. If the number of dots on the domino matched the number on the card, they got to keep both. The person with the most matches won the game. They loved playing this game!

A Topeka West student reading to the class

Playing "Domino Concentration"

Pumpkin Paper Plates and Study Buddies!

We made paper plate pumpkins today so we could have a decorated Halloween bulletin board. In the morning, the students painted paper plates orange. In the afternoon, they cut out their pumpkin's faces and glued them to the plate. They had a choice between a scary pumpkin face or a silly face. Most of them chose scary. Then, we also started study buddies today. Third graders will come to our classroom every Friday and work with the kindergarteners. We come up with fun activities for them to do together. For example, they designed a paper T-shirt today.

One of the study buddy groups

Painting their "pumpkins"


Cutting out the face

Some of the students holding up their pumpkin plates


The finished bulletin board in our room

Halloween Pattern Chain

We talked about patterns today in math and made an AAB pattern chain. This was a challenging pattern for the students, but they all met the challenge. :-) Since it's so close to Halloween, we used some Halloween colors. Here are some pictures to show you the great job they did on making their pattern chains.

Making their pattern chains


Here are 3 of the groups holding up their pattern chains

Blue + Yellow = Green

Today, in Explorations (a science class with Mrs. Armfield) the kids heard the story of Little Blue and Little Yellow. Here's the condensed version of the story: Little Blue and Little Yellow were friends who lost each other. They were so happy when they found each other, that they hugged. Do you know what happened when they hugged? They made green! :-) The students were given two globs of white frosting. Mrs. Armfield had them put blue food coloring in one glob of frosting and mix it together to make blue. Then, they put yellow in the other glob of frosting and mixed it together to make yellow. Lastly, they mixed the blue and yellow frosting together to make green. Then, they got to spread it on a graham cracker and enjoy the tasty snack.
We also did some ice painting today. I put food coloring in ice cubes, and they used the ice cubes to paint the letter "I" for their alphabet scrapbooks.

Mrs. Armfield showing them how to mix the food coloring into the frosting

Mixing the blue into the frosting

Mixing the yellow into the frosting

After she mixed the blue and yellow frosting together - It's green!

One of the tables enjoying the tasty green frosting on their graham cracker

Ice painting