Now that Halloween has come and gone, it's time for all of the beautiful artwork to come down.  This week we got our creative juices flowing with scarecrow art and writing.  We began by reading the book Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant.

The pictures in this book are beautiful!  The author describes the life of a scarecrow through a poetic story; painting pictures with her words.  Once we read the story, we talked about the life of a scarecrow and the general consensus was that my class would not like to be scarecrows.

Following this lovely read, I gave my students the task of creating their own scarecrow heads out of paper.  The only thing given to them was the brown for the face and they went to to town using my gigantic scrap bin (which has taken me years to build up.)  They built for 30 minutes, ensuring their scarecrow was perfect!  Here are some of their amazing creations!

Imagine having these cute little faces staring at you all day in a cornfield!  This project was followed up during Writer's Workshop with the writing portion of the assignment.  We talked about making things "come to life" like the author did in the book.  The students then set to work, giving their scarecrows a story. Here are a few examples of their little stories:

I love how on the last one, she says her scarecrow has no "theef" (teeth) because no scarecrow has theef, but she loves to eat pasta!  Clearly we are still working on our writing, but it is only the 3rd month of First Grade.

  

It's the most wonderful time of the year!  

I know, I know, I know...you are used to hearing that at Christmas! It is however my opinion that the most wonderful time is HALLOWEEN!!!

I don't know about you, but my classroom is currently covered in nothing but pumpkins!  This week we (my grade partner and I) decided to ditch our Properties and Characteristics Science unit and explore the world of October's most beloved squash...the pumpkin!

We used the adorable Great Pumpkin Investigation Book by Cara Carroll at First Grade Parade!   You can find it here https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Great-Pumpkin-Investigation-Student-Journal-163736

This book incorporates Math and Science Investigation of a pumpkin.  My favorite part of this book is that each page asks the students to predict and then check their answer.  One of the hardest things for the littles to understand is that it is ok to get the wrong answer in Science, because that is how we learn!    

Predicting and counting how many lines are on their pumpkin.  

Predicting how tall their pumpkin is, and then checking their guess with Unifix Cubes.

Predicting how big around the pumpkin is, and then checking their guess with string.

Lastly we cut the pumpkin in half and the kids has to estimate how many seeds were inside.  Most of the guessed between 10-20 until we showed them what 10 actually looked like.  We ended up counting and tallying 241 seeds in that tiny pumpkin!

It was a messy day for me, since I was the one covered in pumpkin goo, but the kids loved it!  I hope everyone has a safe and very happy Halloween!

Whew!!!  I just love 5-day weekends; we had so much fun!  My school doesn't take Ski Weekend, instead we take and extended President's Day Weekend=Ski Weekend.  We started with a half day of school on Thursday, and go back to school tomorrow.  This weekend was a fun filled weekend.  My hubby's (Mr. B) birthday was on Friday and that is when our crazy whirlwind weekend began.

Friday was a gorgeous day here on the San Francisco Peninsula!  It was ~72 degrees at the coast which we took full advantage of!  We have the world's best neighbors, we spent 3+ hours with them at the beach in Pacifica.  The kids played in the water, climbed rocks, played football and played hide-and-seek.  It was so warm my daughter (G) went through 3 outfits because she kept getting wet over and over.  We spent a few minutes sitting together during which I was able to snap this quick family selfie!

We also have a 1 year old Shih Tzu named Bruno.  He also loves the beach, but mostly chases seagulls at warp speed!  He really thinks he is the size of a German Shepard!  Shhh, don't tell him...

We spent the rest of Friday having a delicious BBQ with our wonderful neighbors.  Needless to say, Mr. B had a great day!  We spent the rest of the weekend driving up to Northern California to visit family, crossing things off our To-Do List and getting crafty.  I finally finished a bedroom set I refinished and love the way it turned out!  Whether you have school, a snow day or ski weekend, I hope it's an enjoyable week!  Oh...I almost forgot pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training tomorrow...baseball is almost here!!! 

So, I am new to this whole blogging world!  I am very excited you have found my blog and I hope you decide to stick around for awhile!  I am blogging about one of my most favorite Valentine's Day projects which is based on the beloved book Guess How Much I love You by Sam McBratney!

This project is an oldie but goodie...it stems from the days way back when you had to really search for new and exciting projects.  You couldn't just hop on Teachers Pay Teachers to find adorable crafts!  This project was from a Mailbox Magazine, circa the year 2000 (yes, I have been teaching that long!)  First, we listen to the adorable story of Big Nut Brown Hare and Little Nut Brown Hare competing to show who has more love for the other.  Then, we complete this adorable version on Big Nut Brown Hair!   The kiddos love that the project consists only of heart shapes.  We then did a lot sequencing with this story and in Writer's Workshop, we wrote an illustrated a list of animals we love!

I hope you enjoyed this blog and come back again!