Dear Parents,
We began our week carving our pumpkin. Everyone helped choose what kind of eyes and teeth we wanted. We ended up carving his face upside down, due to a rotten spot on his forehead. When we were finished, someone kept saying: “Turn him over!” We put a candle in him and roasted his seeds.
We carved one pumpkin and saved a smaller one for an experiment. We will place the small non-carved pumpkin in our yard, and watch what happens as time passes.
We all looked into mirrors to see what color eyes we have. We identified different parts of our eyes: eyebrows, eyelids, eyelashes, eyeballs, irises, and pupils. Everyone got a picture of eyes to color in with their eye color. We laid them out to count them, to see how many of each color we have in our class. Ten people have the same color eyes! We glued them into the shape of a pie.
On Halloween we made a list of how we’re alike and how we’re different. The class said we’re alike in these ways: we all have two feet, skin, brains, hearts, and we all have mamas. One person disagreed and said, “Everyone does not have a mama.” He said grownups don’t have mamas, but the class said yes they do. How we’re different: we have on different costumes, we smell different, we look different, we have different voices, and the color of our bodies is different, some light and some dark.
On Wednesday while some posed with Tasha in yoga, the rest of us worked on self portraits. We looked into the mirror to find shapes on our faces. Children said that our faces are round, oval, and rectangular. We saw circles in our eyes, and half circles in our mouths. Everyone used black markers on white paper to draw themselves. Some added eyelashes and teeth. One person had teardrops in her eyes but a smile on her mouth.
We drew an A on a piece of paper and noticed the triangle shape. The class said a triangle has three sides. We also counted three points. We listed words that start with the letter A: Andrew, Alli, apple, ant, anteater, alphabet, and angry. We will add letters, yes, twenty-five more!
On Friday we read Be Nice to Otters, A Book About Manners. We made a list of observations of friends playing nicely together. We listed friends playing, sharing, taking turns, smiling, and listening to one another. We read the list aloud to the class.
We compared leaves in our yard. We noticed differences and similarities between leaves of the same tree. We sorted three trees' leaves we found in our yard. The children noticed that leaves from the same tree had different shapes, sizes, and colors. Some leaves had zigzag edges and others were smooth. After observing the differences in leaves, and the differences in apples, we reviewed our list of how we are different and alike too.
Have a sunny weekend,
Therese