How to Carve a Pumpkin!

Last week we had a little Fall fun during writing. We practiced our how-to writing skills to write How To Carve a Pumpkin. But, before we could get started I wanted to take a class vote on what type of eyes, nose, and mouth our jack-o-lantern would have. 

This kids were give a simple ballot and voted in the morning and afternoon classes.

        

They placed their votes in the pumpkins bucket. And the votes were in...

                        

Creepy triangle eyes, regular triangle nose, and happy smile for the mouth!

Then we read a story about the process a pumpkin goes through to final become a jack-o-lantern.

And it was carving time! 

Our pumpkin turned out slightly creepy. He actually didn't last too long in our humid classroom :(

The kids were so excited to then go write a How To Carve a Pumpkin piece of writing. 

Many, many pictures of our Halloween day adventures to come! Happy Halloween and be safe trick or treating tonight!

Field Trip to The Oil Ranch

Our field trip to The Oil Ranch in Hockley was so much fun! It was a hot fall day and we were busy from the moment we got there. It was such a fun place with so much to do that we didn't even get to everything in our time there. There were many other schools there the same day as us so we practiced our patience often when waiting in lines, but overall we had a blast! We tried the petting zoo, playgrounds, duck races, train ride, hay ride, horseback riding, and more! 

After all of the fun festivities we went over to the pumpkin patch to pick the best pumpkins to take home!

By the time we got on the bus to ride home everyone was wiped out! The ride back to Creek View was very calm and quiet. 

Silly girls!

Thank you to every parent volunteer for making our field trip a success! We absolutely could not have done it without you all!

The Candy Corn Bandit!

The Candy Corn Bandit is a fun little fall activity that I have done the past couple of years with my classes. It's a fun way to get the kids making predictions and using context clues. I always start the morning telling the kids that I bought candy corn to keep in our room and then all of a sudden the candy corn goes missing! 

The "Candy Corn Bandit" leaves a sneaky note and clue to send us on a hunt around the school to find our lost jar of candy corn.

The clues provide context clues of where to go, they don't tell us "go to the library" because that would be too easy! I chose different students to read the clues to our class and we all worked together to predict where the next clue may be. 

Eventually we were led right back to my classroom where the jar of candy corn was waiting for us! Sneaky sneaky! Then we all sat down to write about our adventure and create a fun little Candy Corn Bandit man. 

Oddly enough, after lunch, the candy corn jar was stolen AGAIN when my homeroom was in the class! Strange!

Our finished Candy Corn Bandit stories are hanging outside of our room for all to see and be warned about that sneaky bandit!