The Pumpkin Plant (a year long project!)

Probably my favorite thing from this past school year, was our year long Pumpkin Project. I had found the idea to "plant" a pumpkin from this blog.It was so fun to have this growing in our classroom and the class LOVED watching the growth and changes in the plant. I posted periodically about this project over the year, but I thought it would be great to see it all in one place.

WEEK 1:
Just put dirt in the pumpkin and let the seeds sprout. Genius! I cut the pumpkin open and we talked about what was in there, what it looked like, what they thought about the inside of the pumpkin. Then they each got to put some dirt in the pumpkin... and we're just waiting for a sprout! (All that day they kept coming to tell me that we didn't have anything growing yet. I don't think they really believe me that it's going to take a couple weeks. =])

WEEK 3: There was nothing more fun than coming in each day to see if anything had changed in our pumpkins. This week we finally saw a sprout!

WEEK 4: The original sprout got so tall quickly and we had some more popping up!

WEEK 5: Right before the long Thanksgiving Weekend, I noticed that the pumpkins were starting to get soft on the bottom and sides, so I decided to plant them under some dirt. They were sprouting like crazy.

WEEK 10: I had been regularly watering the plants, and unfortunately we had a little bit of a set back when the first batch of sprouted plants died. They seemed to mostly come from one of the pumpkins, and then the other one began to sprout! On these sprouts we also got to see the first real pumpkin leaves. Very exciting!

WEEK 15: The pumpkins really started to comeback strong after half of the sprouts withered away.

WEEK 18: The pumpkin plants had been growing steadily and were doing really great. This week we had noticed that there were little "bud pods" and the kids could not wait to see what they would become.

WEEK 19: The pumpkin plants had been growing like crazy and were quite full of sprouts, and we were still getting some sprouts. We learned that the flowers can be either male or female. The male flowers are on the end of just a long vine, and the female flowers have that small little ball at the base of the flower (what becomes the pumpkin).

                                                 

WEEK 26: Our school does an art show every year, and this year's theme was "In the Garden". One of my class's projects for that was to paint pictures of our amazing pumpkin plant.

                                                

WEEK 28: The pumpkin plant had really been thriving and had filled out their container. I wanted to make sure that they could grow more, so I moved them outside into the school garden!

                                         

WEEK 30: The pumpkins took to outside really well! They basked in the sun and flourished!

WEEK 33: It seemed like everyday I looked at the plant outside it just got bigger and bigger. Some of the leaves were so large that they were bigger than my head. Incredible!

WEEK 34: A baby pumpkin!!

WEEK 36: The main part of the pumpkin plants unfortunately became infested with some sort of bug and was starting to rot. Most of the plant had to be pulled and I was only able to leave a few of the sprouts in the ground. At that point there were two pumpkins on the vine.

WEEK 45: I didn't do anything with the pumpkins, because I heard that the pumpkins might keep ripening, even off the vine. I waited as long as a I could (until I noticed that the stem was starting to get a little moldy). It turned orange! Even the little one started to change to orange.

I wanted to cut the pumpkins in half, because one of our projects during Halloween week was to talk about the parts of the cross section. 

The pumpkin was still good so I saved some for the bunnies and my rats (they'll be psyched!) and I was able to save most of the seeds from the large pumpkin. Not sure what I'm going to do with them yet... Maybe plant some more pumpkins? =]

Gardening!

 Our theme this week was "Gardening" and it was the first week of our school's Summer Camp!! Who-hoo!

During summer camp, we always have a Yoga day where the school all together does a child centered yoga workout. The video we've been using is great because most of the poses are named after animals, like a lion... RAWR!

We also have splash day, where all the kids put on their bathing suits and we play outside in water tables and have a fun squiggly sprinkler to run through.

We read this week: My Garden by Kevin Henkes
                              Mortimer's First Garden by Karma Wilson
                              Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman 
                              Living Sunlight by Molly Bang
                              The Story of the Root Children by Sibylle von Olfers

Our question of the week was "What do you want in your garden?" This worked really well after reading the book "My Garden", because that's what the little girl talks about, flowers that can change color, chocolate bunnies, a jelly bean bush etc.

For our theme of the week, found worms outside and made them a habitat. We will observe them over the course of the summer and then put them back out in the woods in August. The kids really had fun digging for the worms! Here is a great step by step of what to do.

On TeachersPayTeachers I found a great FREE worksheet that not only makes a cool project, but really helps kids with those tricky teen numbers!

We planted seeds for flowers that hummingbirds will really like once they can go outdoors, and we watched a cool video about hummingbirds that talks about how they fly. It has great closeups of the birds. Worth a look!

We made hand print flower pictures.

Using toilet paper rolls, peanut butter and seed, we made bird feeders!

We played The Lady Bug game.

We wrote in our journals about what we would like to have in our own gardens.

 This summer we have some older kids on our class with us. While my kids are working on their journals, the older kids work on this reading log where they respond to the book we read in the morning.

And for Movie Friday we watched The Lorax! Yum, we had popcorn!!

Our song of the week was "Planting Time" (Row row row your boat), I found it here.

"Dig, dig, dig the earth (make digging motion)
Then you plant your seeds (pretend to drop seeds)
A gentle rain (Flutter fingers down)
And bright sunshine (Circle arms above head)
Will help your flowers grow."
(Hold one arm parallel to ground and move other arm up behind it with
fingers extended to represent a flower growing)

We had fun with all things outside this week!

I had a leaf nose! =]

The younger class grew grass this week! When it was all finished, they let us give it to the bunnies for a snack! =]

The games that we played this week at morning meeting were so fun!

We played "Alphabet Catch" with a beanbag. We toss the beanbag around the circle and the kids have to say the next letter in the alphabet. We started tossing it to the person next to use, once the kids get more comfortable with the game we'll stand in a circle and toss the beanbag across to friends.

"The Weather Changed" is a fun game. The kids decide on certain movements for weather, and we continually do the movements until the weatherman changes the weather. This week I started out as the weatherman, but I will have the kids be the weatherman too.

We played "1,2,3" which we have played before and is definitely a fan favorite! We stand in a circle and each child says 1,2 or 3 consecutive numbers starting with 1 up to 9. So for example: "1,2,3" "4" "5,6" "7,8,9" and the next child who would have to say 10 sits down and is out of the round. Then it starts back at one. My class really loves this one, and usually if we play it in the morning, I will hear them in centers or at their lunch tables playing their own facilitated versions of the game.

"Zoom" is a fun and quick game to play with a class of any age. First you need to pick a direction that the zoom is going to go around the circle. The person starting says zoom and turns their head the the person next, and it goes around the circle. Once the class gets comfortable with this game, I will record how long it takes us!

"Number Ball" is a lot like our alphabet catch in that we toss a beanbag to our friends. This game is a little different. The goal is to get to 30, but if the beanbag is dropped we have to start back at 1. I wonder if we will be able to get to 30 by the end of the summer?!

We are keeping up our work on our sight words! Every morning we go over around 10 of them. Once we've mastered them, they will go on our sight word wall! So exciting! We're working our way through the 220 Dolch sight word list.

Going Green! (C, D, E, 25 and Hexagons)

Our theme this week was "Going Green" and we focused on the number 25, and reviewed the letters C, D and E, and hexagons.

We read this week: Duck and Goose by Tad Hills
                              The Story of the Root Children by Sibylle Von Olfers
                              Living Sunlight by Molly Bang
                              The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
                              My Garden by Kevin Henkes

Our question of the week was "How can you 'Go Green'" It was such a strange saying to my kids that some of these answers are hilarious!

For our theme of the week, we made Earth Sun-catchers using wax paper and crayon. They almost glow when the sun shines through them!

We also made recycle themed collages and talked about why recycling is better for the planet then just throwing something away.

I already know that my kids love the newer movie version of the Lorax, so I wanted to show them the original. (Be warned! There is some not nice name calling... chalk it up to being from the 70's I guess...)

We also wrote in our journals this week about ways that we could help the planet. We brainstormed a list, and then the kids picked what they were going to do.

We planted seeds!

Our song of the week was "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" from here. This song was big hit with my class last year, so I'm hoping my kids this year like it just as much!

"Reduce Reuse Recycle

Are words that we all know

We have to save our planet

So we can live and grow

We might be only children

We have to try, you’ll see

We will save our planet

It starts with you and me!"

We talked about the shape hexagon practiced recognizing them. I created this page based on ones that we had done in the past.

For our number, I made these worksheets that reinforce the one to one concept. The kids practice writing the number and have to color a square for each picture that they see.

We also used our math boxes to help us count to 25. This is a great way to really get kids to learn that each number stands for something.

For our letter activities, we reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about, C, D and E. These pages came from Letters for Little Learners.

We Celebrated "C" with a cake full of c pictured candles. Cut and paste projects are so fun because my kids can do them now completely on their own and they are so proud of themselves! This project came from Letter of the Week- Book 1.

From Sounds Like Fun, we did the "Elephant Exercise" It was really fun to bend and stretch and swing our trunk, all while listening for the sounds that the letter E makes.

The letter of the week books have pages that you can make a book into. I picked from both to get my "favorites". Each week, we'll work on these pages, and each child will end up with an alphabet book at the end of the year. I like to do these pages, because not only do they get more practice writing the letter, but they also have to finish the sentence on the page, which is really cool. It gets them thinking!

This week the "C" page came from Book 1, the "D" page came from Book 2, and the "E" page came from Book 1.

We also worked more on recognizing our review letters in the tongue twisters from Alphabet and Counting. We used this book to turn our letters into fun animals, but on the pages is also a little tongue twister. I printed it large and made a picture, then laminated them with contact paper. Using wet erase markers, we take turns finding the letters hidden!

We kept working on our sight words! Every morning we go over around 10 of them. Once we've mastered them, they will go on our sight word wall! So exciting! We're working our way through the 220 Dolch sight word list.

Here is what we have mastered so far!

Speaking of sight words, from Confessions of a HomeSchooler, I got these great sight word pages. We continued this week with the word "do".