Thanksgiving Feast with our Friends and Family

We had a yummy spread for our Thanksgiving Feast. The Spunky Monkeys want to thank all the families that provided the food for our feast.

Look at all that food. We had more than enough food for all of us.

Look at our beautiful decorations.
As we learned about Fall, we made several items decorating the table.
During our unit on pumpkins, we made pumpkins out of pantyhose. Yes, I said pantyhose!
We also made gorgeous clay leaf bowls. And of course, we used our Thanksgiving Story Chains.

Here's a better look at the decorations.
Daelan said the blessing and then we ate!
We had lots of family members come and share in our feast.

Isabella and her brother, Logan and mom.

Cooper and his dad.

Mitchell and his dad.

Mrs. R, our principal, came and visited too.

Meryck and his sister, Cecilia and his dad.
Meryck's dad is in the military and we are sooo thankful for him and all he does to protect us!

Luc with his mom, dad, and sister Vada.

Bradley with his dad. Bradley's mom came too but Mrs. Martin didn't get a picture of her with Bradley.

Bella with her mom and dad. Bella is too cool!

The Story of Thanksgiving

We have been using a large story chain to help us remember the story of Thanksgiving.
So, on the last day we made one of our own.

The first chain is brown for the Pilgrims not being allowed to worship God in their own way, so they leave England. The next link is white for the sails on the Mayflower, the ship they sailed on.
The next three are blue for the long journey over the ocean to the New World.

The sailors on the Mayflower saw land, so we added a green link.
Once the Pilgrims reached the New World, they had a long cold winter,
next we added three white links.

After the long cold winter, spring finally arrived. A green link is next.
During the spring, the Pilgrims met the Native Americans. The Native Americans helped them learn how to live off the new land. A tan colored link is added for the Native Americans.

That fall, the harvest was plentiful. The Pilgrims wanted to have a Thanksgiving Feast with their new friends. We add a brown for turkey, orange for pumpkins,
red for cranberries, and yellow for corn.

Mitchell working on his story chain.

Mrs. Smith is almost finished helping us with our story chains.

We review the story after we finish our chains.

Josie showing off her story chain.

Squanto's Corn

We have been learning about the Native Americans and the Pilgrims.
We read about Squanto and how he helped the Pilgrims plant corn.

Our Funky Food was making our own Sqanto's Corn.

First we made the soil. Dustin is pouring his soil out.

Isabella is adding the corn seed in her soil.

Arianah then added the famous fish.

Henry is covering the fish and corn seed with the soil.

Now we are all ready to eat.
Dustin, Catherine, Bella, Meryck, and Henry

Arianah, Aubrey, Jonathan, Daelin, and Bradley

Vayla, Cooper, Mitchell, and K.J.

Isabella, Desiray, Miguel, and Juana

Spiders and Scarecrows

We read books all about Spiders. We knew the Author's Purpose for writing the book was to inform us of something new about spiders. During our science experiment, Mrs. Martin and Bradley acted out a spider eating a bug. First, the bug flies into the spider's web. Then the spider bites the bug with it's fangs. The poor "Bradley Bug" is dead.

The spider then wraps up the bug to enjoy later. The spider uses her legs and web to spin the bug around. Poor little"Bradley Bug." The spider has to wait for the bug's insides to become "juice."

Next we got our own bug (Kool Aid Fizz tablet) in our web. See his nice smiling face?

Next we added our venom (water) and watched it turn to bug juice.

Then we got to drink up our bug juice just like a real spider.

We really enjoyed "eating" our bugs.

YUM!

Slurp! Ahhh, mmm, mmm, good.

We also made Silly scarecrows. Thank you to Juana's family for providing some of the ingredients to make them.

Luc and Jonathan

K.J. and Adan

Juana

Henry

Arianah

We love to make our Phonemic Food Activities.

Pumpkins and Scarecrows

We have been doing all kinds of activities centered around pumpkins and scarecrows.
Below is a picture of our scarecrow. We made him.

First we had to write sight words from our reading folders. Two words per sheet.

Next, we had to take our sheet and read our sight words to Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Martin.

Then, we went to Mrs. Wilbanks, crumbled up our sheets and stuffed them into the pants and shirt to build our scarecrow.

Henry loved it! He was very excited.

Arianah had to hurry to start another sheet. We worked on the scarecrow for at least 20 minutes. We had some of the best writing and excitement about reading sight words all year!

We also had pumpkin games. Mrs. Smith's group is playing pumpkin add ups. They roll a number and put that many pumpkins in the patch. Cover them up and roll again. Add that many pumpkins to the patch and count up to find the new number. Don't forget to write the total number of pumpkins in the pumpkin patch.

During guided reading, we played on Starfall.com. They have a reading activity that is about pumpkins.

You even get to pick your own pumpkin and build it. The computer in the middle is making a pumpkin. The other two are interacting with the story about pumpkins.

We have other fun pumpkin activities too.