Fall Fun

Hello Buddies!

I know it's been a while but life just keeps getting in the way of our little blog here.  As I type this I should already be asleep because I have been tired for the last two hours, yet here I am!  

I thought we would share a simple and fun activity the Reading Buddies got together to do the end of last month. We had all been working our little behinds off with SGOs, preassessments, data collection, report cards, parent/teacher conference, and you know-TEACHING that it was time for a little fun. As they say, sometimes you just have to pull out the paint. 

I found some lovely autumn colors in my closet and a sheet of card stock for each student (regular paper would have ripped or dried weirdly).  I poorer the paint to each table and Q-tips as paint brushes. This way the little ones couldn't over do it with the paint and I could throw the Q-tips out which means no paint brushes to clean and dry and put away.  Everything we used just went in the trash.  

Here are just a few of our lovely Fall Trees. 

Hope you've had some fun in your classroom lately, if not...IT'S TIME TO PULL OUT THE PAINT!

-Damien

Pumpkin Math-Seriously everyone should do this!

Let's go back....way back....to my first year of teaching!  

My classroom is directly across the hall from a first grade classroom and I watched them celebrate and learn through thematic teaching.  You know what I mean apples on Johnny Appleseed Day, pumpkins around Halloween, you get the idea. 

I was determined to add some of that fun to my fifth grade classroom.  My first activity, Pumpkin Math was born! It has undergone quite a few changes in the last seven years, and now it is ready to share with you. 

On day #1 of the activity my students use a variety of materials to discover the circumference, radius, and diameter of a pumpkin that a parent volunteer has supplied.  We work in small groups and estimate and find the weight.  Students also write a physical description about their pumpkin so that everyone can identify which pumpkin belongs to each group.  

Using pop cubes to find the radius

Collecting our data

On day #2 we get REALLY MESSY.  We take a guess on the number of seeds inside the pumpkin and then start scooping out all of the seeds and pumpkin guts.  Here I am able to see a great deal about my students and their problem solving techniques.  For example who is counting one seed at a time and who is making small groups of seeds.  This gets messy and makes for some awesome photo-ops. I take the seeds home that day and season and cook theme to be shared as a treat as we analyze our data the next day.  

Guessing the number of seeds in our pumpkin 

Emptying out the pumpkin in our to count the seeds

 Creating piles of 20 to count the seeds

On day #3 we analyze all the data that we have collected in order to find the mean of the pumpkins we have in the room.  We also pull out the pumpkin carving kits and create jack o'lanterns out of our emptied out pumpkins.  

This is an activity that my kids have LOVED year after year.  When they come back to visit after leaving my class Pumpkin Math is one of the things we did together that always want to reminisce about.

You can grab this activity at my TPT Store: The Reading Buddies Pumpkin Math 

Can you smell the pumpkin in the air?

Damien