Fall Room Tour! (Part 2)

Our math center!  

We used real pumpkins in whole group math to practice ordinal numbers. Students took turns placing the pumpkins in order. Then, a student was selected to take a pumpkin away and hide it as the other students closed their eyes. They took turns guessing which number/pumpkin was missing! Now the pumpkins have moved into our math center! Students can have hands-on practice with ordinal numbers or they can act out the story below.

There are a couple versions of "Five Little Pumpkins." I wrote this version to incorporate the pumpkin life cycle/production sequence. 

These mini pumpkins and leaves were in the Target dollar aisle! I made the cards on photoshop.

This is an idea I found on pinterest. They are fall tactile number cards! Students had to carefully punch the dots/count 10 and punch out the dots on the numeral with a thumbtack. I know what you are thinking..20 four year olds with thumbtacks..SCARY!  ..but amazingly they were so careful and focused (and quiet!) while they were punching dots with the tacks! Then they glued seed pods (beans) to their cards.  This activity idea is from: http://thepreschooltoolboxblog.com/?p=1216

Here is a photo of our fall harvest pretend center..

I love having  books, vocabulary, and writing in most of the centers! Fellow teachers that I worked with last year showed me how to incorporate literacy into practically any center! 

Our discovery center! 

In this center we have: color sensory bottles, rainbow observing with cd's/flashlights, rainbow light up wands, rain stick,magnets, ABC/number wood chips, tree slice, fall leaves, and colored feather sorting. 

We also have white boards for writing vocabulary, life cycle sequencing cards (from: http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/assets/PDF/Life_Cycle_of_a_Pumpkin.pdf), binoculars, seasonal books, and our ongoing experiments! 

The teacher across the hall introduced me to "Sid the Science Kid" videos!  She always does something fun in class to go along with the Sid experiment.  She had her class do an experiment with decaying bread, clean/dirty apples, and part of a pumpkin.  We tried the bread and the apples. For the bread, we had the students squirt the slices with water, place in ziploc baggie, and hang in the window. For the apple, we passed around a slice of apple and talked about germs on our hands. The clean untouched apple was placed straight into the mason jar. It took less than a week for us to notice the differences! And my oh my is it disgusting! I am amazed at this experiment! The kids love saying "decay." I had one little boy say at lunch, "I'm eating decayed cheeto today!"  Science is my favorite part of the day! : ) 

We've had a pumpkin seed taste test and also some pumpkin investigations/observations! Did I mention I love fall?!! 

 We had tested a pumpkin in  class to see if it would sink or float. Then we made boats out of tin foil, floated them, and then sank them with marbles. Students counted how many marbles sank their boat ..love it when science and math combine!  Each student took home a mini pumpkin over the weekend with instructions to report back on how they sank their pumpkin (without using their hands!) I love how their ideas were their own. Some students wrote word for word how they did their experiment, some drew a picture, some parents even took pictures! A few ideas were to scoop it out and let it soak overnight, tape a hammer to it, tape legos to it, and tape a toy plane to it... (see if it flies instead of sinks! HA!)


Check out another fall setup HERE!