Spirit Night- Spring Creek BBQ

Tonight was a great night at Spring Creek BBQ in Pearland! Our school had a Spirit Night where a percentage of the proceeds is given to our school PTO. What a great place! Teachers were there working to help greet customers and serve Hot Fresh Bread (not rolls). Everyone there was very kind to us, very helpful! Teachers were given a free apron to wear and take home, a free meal afterwards, and we are supposed to receive a $25 gift card. It was great to see all of the smiling faces hollering "Mrs. Bonner, Mrs. Bonner" out there with their families to support Silverlake Elementary. Thank you Spring Creek BBQ for an awesome night!

Firefighters

BIG Firetruck!
Do I look confident in what I am doing???

Since October is the month to discuss fire safety, we had firefighters visit our school. It was a great group of men that really explained things to the students on their level. They allowed them to view the firetruck, they discussed fire safety, showed the students the gear firefighters wear, and demonstrated stop, drop, and roll with the students. One fun thing they did was dress up a teacher in the firefighters' gear. Guess who that teacher was????? ME! The children enjoyed it and I have a new found respect for firefighters and the job they do. Just getting on that gear is enough. It is heavy, hot, and stinky! To sum it all up, they even brought prizes for all of the students! Thank you Pearland Volunteer Fire Department!

Pumpkins

Our pumpkin patch

So I am going to try to catch up in a couple of different posts.....
Last week, we extended our study of fall with pumpkins. Many of the students brought in different types of pumpkins and gourds. To display these and of course since we learned they grew on vines, the students assisted in making a pumpkin patch in our classroom. During our station time, students in science station had the opportunity to explore the different ones using hand lenses and recorded their data. We also used the different pumpkins to compare and predict weights, order by size, and we will be carving pumpkins this week. That is the fun part!I can't wait. It is an OOOOEYYYY-GOOOOEYYY mess, but they love it! We will decide as a class what geometrical shapes to cut to make faces and also count the seeds by making sets of tens.

Community Helpers/ Fire Safety

This week we have been studying fire safety and looking at the individuals who exhibit good citizenship in our community. The students have enjoyed exploring this through literature and online resources. One site the students enjoyed is http://www.firesafety.gov/kids/flash.shtm. There are different games that the students can play including crosswords, word searches, coloring page, and quizzes. One fun thing we did when talking about was dress up as our chosen occupation and take pictures. We then wrote about what we want to be when we grow up. The children were TOO cute! They used known sight words to write their sentences. I will have to post pictures soon.....
I am ready for some cooler weather. This business in the 80's and 90's is crazy!

Exploring Leaves

Today we explored leaves that we found on our fall walk on Tuesday. We made observations and recorded what our leaves looked like. We also measured them using unifix cubes, a non-standard unit. We tested to see how many pennies it took to sink the leaves, and we also counted to see how long it would take for our leaves to fall to the ground. What a great exploration project and the students really enjoyed it!

Apple Tasting

Today we had an apple taste test with many different "apple" things. We tasted red, yellow, and green apples. We also tasted apple pie, apple juice, and our homemade apple sauce. Our homemade apple sauce was made using the different apples brought in by students. Our favorite activity of the day was peeling the apples using an old fashioned apple peeler! WHAT FUN! Here is a video of us peeling one of our apples...