What a great week. It was so full of learning and fun! Our theme this week was pumpkins.
Our first day this week, we learned 5 Little Pumpkins and created an art project where we stamped pumpkins and a moon with sponges and created vines by curling strips of green paper on our pencils. Our fine motor skills are improving so much!
The poem goes like this:
5 Little
Pumpkins
There were 5 little pumpkins in a patch all
alone.
The 1st one said, “I wish a child would
take me home!”
The 2nd one said, “Don’t you worry, fuss,
or fret!”
The 3rd one said, “I’m as orange as I can
get!”
The 4th one said, “I see children by the
house!”
The 5th one said, “Sh-sh-sh! Let’s be quiet
as a mouse!”
Then the children picked the pumpkins from
the patch with such delight~
The pumpkins are going home to be carved
for Halloween night!
One of my very favorite things about preschool is the friends I've made. We're always nice to each other and help each other when we need it. Ms. Marianne is so proud of us for being such great friends! She loves to see us jump up and say "I can help you do that!" :)
Did you smell the play dough that I brought home this week? It's made from pumpkin puree, spices and flour. It smells like pumpkin pie! Ms. Marianne made it for us to play with and make "pumpkins" out of. We had such a great time using our imaginations as we squished, kneaded, rolled and pinched our dough. I brought a bag home... if it's refrigerated, it'll last for about a week (because it's totally natural!) 
Our main focus this week in Science was the life cycle of a pumpkin. We read books, handled real life pumpkins and seeds and visited the pumpkin patch at V. Farms! We discussed how a pumpkin starts as a seed, grows into a spout, then a plant vine. Flowers bloom on the vine and then green pumpkins begin to grow. When the green pumpkins turn orange, they're ready to harvest for people to buy and make into pumpkin pies and jack-o-lanterns. To practice explaining and better understand this life cycle, we created a pumpkin craft that had a "vine" extending from a ripe, orange pumpkin that had been made into a jack-o-lantern. Every so often along the vine was a circle that illustrated a part of the life cycle. When you loop the vine around to create a circle with the jack-o-lantern, you can see the life cycle! We can practice telling the sequence of the life of a pumpkin by following the vine from the seed end to the jack-o-lantern end. 
Our biggest, best activity for this week was our trip to the pumpkin patch. This field trip was awesome! Our family members came with us and shared in the fun. Here are some pictures of our pumpkin themed adventures: we played games, bounced in the bounce house and on the moon bounce (a GIANT, air-filled pillow),
climbed to the top of the Tire Mountain,
"milked a cow",
rode the train,
rode the giant slide with Ms. Marianne (so fun!!),
raced rubber duckies at the water pump,
rode the train,
found our way through the corn maze,
and picked out a miniature pumpkin, just for us!
What a day!
One other neat thing that we did this week was practiced our sight words (and learned the new ones: is, see & my) by playing a game. Whomever could shout out the word that Ms. Marianne held up first got to keep the card with the word on it. Whomever collected the most cards won the game. N was our winner this week! You can definitely tell she's been practicing her sight words at home.
Way to go!
Next week will be a Halloween theme, since Thursday is the holiday. I can wear my costume if I want, but we'll be having a regular learning day- complete with a fun, active reading experience that'll require lots of movement, so we have to plan accordingly. :)
Love,
Your Child
and
Ms. Marianne
