Happy Halloween!

To make up for a lack of recent posts, my Halloween post is going to be huge. I took tons of pictures. :-) Early in the morning, we went on our annual Halloween parade. The Topeka West High School band led our parade. We walked to the neighborhood nursing home for a visit. When we came back from the parade, our Halloween party began. First, we made Halloween place mats. They used glitter glue, markers, foam stickers, and regular Halloween stickers to decorate them. After we finished decorating the place mats, we enjoyed our treats. Then, we played Halloween Bingo at the end of our party. It was a lot of fun! In the afternoon, we carved a pumpkin. Each student got a chance to dig out seeds from the pumpkin. Then, they helped me decide what type of face to carve on the pumpkin. After we finished, I put a light in the pumpkin. We turned out the lights and enjoyed seeing our jack-o-lantern glow. To top off the day, we celebrated a friend's birthday. He brought in Halloween goody bags for his birthday treats. We even used our Halloween place mats, when eating the treats. It was a great day! :-)

A group picture:

Two pictures from the parade:


Decorating the Halloween place mats:







Enjoying our Halloween treats:





Digging out the pumpkin seeds from our pumpkin:




Posing with our jack-o-lantern:




Happy 6th Birthday R!

Our First Lasso Party!

The students earn lassos as a class for good behavior. We put those lassos on our spirit stick. When the spirit stick gets filled, we have a class party. On Monday, we earned that party! Today, the students wore their pajamas to school. We ate popcorn and watched Max and Ruby for our party. They had a blast! They can't wait to fill their next stick!

Here's the class wearing their pajamas:

I also decided to join in the fun and wear my pajamas :-)

Fire Safety!

Today, we read a story about fire safety. We talked about what to do in case of fire. I explained about dialing 911. Each student was given a phone worksheet, where we fingerprinted the numbers 911 to help us remember the number. We also did a fun, art project. Each student cut out a flame. Then, they glued it to a piece of paper. Next, I put a blob of yellow and red paint on the flame. The students mixed the two paints together with their fingers to make orange. They turned out great, and they are becoming expert finger-painters.

The Five Senses and Autumn Leaves

In reading/science, we have been working on the five senses. Yesterday, the students were divided into five groups. Each group was assigned a sense. Then, they had to find pictures in magazines for their group's sense. They glued those pictures to a poster to create a collage. For the sense of sight, they were allowed to glue anything they could see with their eyes. They were also looking for pictures of people wearing glasses. For the sense of touch, it was anything they could touch with their hands. They were very creative with this. The sense of smell and hearing were a little more difficult, but the students worked together to help each other. Groups even shared pictures they found with other groups. Of course, the sense of taste was the most fun. This project was hard work, but they did an awesome job! :-)
We have also been talking/reading about the changing leaves. Today, they finger-painted trees using the autumn colors: red, yellow, and orange. It was a lot of fun!

Here are the collages about the five senses:





Finger-painting the trees:






Here's a finished autumn tree:

Fall Cookout and Field Day!

Our school made a big change this year. We moved Field Day to the fall. First, we had our annual fall cookout. Then, we did Field Day in the afternoon. It was a lot of fun! Here are all of the games we participated in:
bowling in the gym
noodle ball
frisbee throw
tug-of-war
ball toss
soccer kick
bean bag toss
3 legged race
basketball throw
relay race
funnel ball

Here are some pictures from the fall cookout:



Bowling in the gym

Playing noodle ball

Frisbee throw

Tug-of-war

Ball toss

Soccer kick


Bean bag toss


3 legged race







Basketball throw


Relay race - they used a rubber chicken as the relay "stick"