The School for Early Excellence's Blog!: So Many Pumpkins!

This week was all about pumpkins! The children learned the difference between a pumpkin and a jack-o-lantern: first it’s a pumpkin, then we remove all of the seeds and stringy goo, finally we cut out a face and it’s called a jack-o-lantern. The children all enjoyed and memorized the poem “Five Little Pumpkins Sitting On The Gate.” Ask your child to recite it for you. We also turned a pumpkin into a fun gross motor activity, practicing hand-eye coordination. After cleaning out the seeds and goopy insides, everyone took a turn hammering in a golf tee that the kids called a "big nail." At SEE’s Trunk-or-Treat this Saturday, we’ll pull out some tees, put in a light and enjoy the spectacular light show!

This week was full of pumpkin activities! The Pre-K class made "pumpkins in the night" using scissors to cut out their pumpkin, then using eye droppers to drop black water color onto the coffee filter. Earlier in the week we competed in pumpkin races - what fun the children had racing and jumping inside an oversized pumpkin bag! We also used our recyclables to make water bottle pumpkins. Orange construction paper was ripped into pieces and stuffed into the bottle, everyone had three triangles, a ½ moon for the face and a green circle for the stem that they glued onto the top. Lastly, the word of the week was CARROT. The children learned to spell the word while tracing and coloring a carrot orange.

The Preschoolers began the week with a pumpkin counting activity to fill the their pumpkin patch with pumpkins. Each child took a turn rolling the dice and counting out pumpkins. On Tuesday, the children were asked that was inside the pumpkin, The answers were right on track as well as a little silly! Some of the answers included "seeds," "goop," "a chipmunk," and "a pumpkin pie!" On Thursday, the children had the opportunity to explore the insides of a pumpkin. The children were asked how if felt and they described the texture as pumpkin sauce, goopy, wet, sticky, spooky and yucky. After collecting the seeds out of the goop, the children planted several seeds in our pumpkin patch for next year!

Also on Thursday, Mrs. M created another amazing science experiment exploring air and jack-o-lanterns. She created an experiment with three candles and three different size jars. The question we asked the children was, "what does a candle need to stay lit?" The experiment showed that the smaller the jar, the less air it had and the quicker the light would burn out. So the children learned that a candle needs air to stay lit which is why a pumpkin needs a jack-o-lantern face in order for the candle to shine bright.

This week’s music and movement with Ms. Mary Beth was all about pumpkins. It was also very special day celebrating Mary Beth for being an amazing teacher at SEE for the past FIVE years! During movement class the children sang the roly poly pumpkin and tapped to the beat of Peter the Pumpkin eater. Using a flashlight while the lights were dimmed they each held the light up to their face and made a Jack-O-Lantern expression, lots of happy faces, a few scary and many funny ones, too.

What a fun pumpkin and jack-o-lantern week! We are looking forward to Trunk-or-Treating with all of you on Saturday.

What's up next?

Next week will explore autumn leaves and a bit of Halloween surprises.

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

October 22: Trunk-or-Treat at SEE! See your Evite for more details and for instructions on how to sign up!
October 31: Costumes are welcome at school! Please no weapons :)
November 1: November tuition is due
November 11: SEE is closed in observance of Veteran's Day
November 23: SEE closes at 3:00pm
November 24-25: SEE is closed for the Thanksgiving holiday

Pictures from the week: