Happy Hallowe'en!

I hope you all have a great time Trick or Treating, if this is your tradition. I was telling the class how in Scotland we do a similar thing but we carve out turnips, which we take with us, and when we stop at a house we have to sing a song or tell a joke or do something to earn our treat! It was fun to compare and contrast the two traditions.

We agreed that whatever your tradition, or if you do not participate, that this is your right and your decision to make and that we should respect everyone's decisions.

I was so proud of my students today. They are transitioning to being real ambassadors of kindness and moving from just thinking about their own excitement. They made the morning Kindergartners feel so special by inviting them into our classroom and showing real interest in their costumes when they walked through our class. Those inviting smiles and compliments really made their day. Thank you parents for raising such kind children.

Thank you also for sending in costumes that not even the most sensitive child would be scared of. I have never been in a school where both parents and children were so thoughtful. Having worked with refugee children in a previous school, I know first hand that masks and swords can be very scary and we want all children in school to feel safe at all times. I can honestly say that I did not see one mask or weapon on any child as we paraded round the whole school.

These children just covered their faces for the photo.  Don't They look great? (I couldn't resist the last photo!)

Ask the students what we did all day and I hope they will say that they did fun things! Now let me now tell you what they actually did:

In art/science we practiced our observational drawings. We had to draw what was really there and not what we imagined in our head. For that reason, I picked an odd shaped scarred pumpkin. My husband was very curious as to why I picked the one I did! After drawing it, we opened the pumpkin and used our senses to describe it. The students had to pick the 5 best describing words they could think of out of the many choices they came up with. Here is a journal from one student:

In math they learned about referents. We used this new skill to give a more accurate estimate of how many seeds were in the pumpkin. We decided that 10 was a good referent number. After seeing what 10 pumpkin seeds looked like, we eyeballed the pile of seeds to give a much more accurate estimate than we had already given.

Another mathematical activity we did was to create a 'Monster of Symmetry.' Here we practiced doubles and symmetry.

We had a fun day and I wish you all a safe night. Happy Hallowe'en!