Here are our TOTALLY awesome totem poles...

Totem poles are totally awesome because many of them were used by the Native Americans to tell stories and legends. Many of the North American North West Native Americans did not have a written language. Thus, those Native Americans would use  meaningful symbols that they would arrange in a certain order to tell their meaningful stories.

After learning about totem poles, my students got rid of their 'modern-day' sneakers and learned about the coolest shoes out west...moccasins! 

Who needs a house when you can live in a colorful, portable, inexpensive tepee!  

Oh yeah! We also popped POPCORN! Although, the Native Americans didn't actually discover popcorn, they did discover the unique process of popping it. Many Native Americans used clay pots filled with very hot sand and placed the kernels in the pot until they popped! When kernels get super hot, they burst and make a "popping" sound.

Of course, in the 21st century we have the luxury of only waiting about 2 minutes for the kernels to pop in a colorful, paper popcorn bowl...

Here's my door filled with things we're thankful for...and of course we're thankful for our baseballs, baseball gloves, toys, cars, toy trains, firetrucks, teddy bears, basketballs, Lego blocks, etc. You know...all the important things in life. ;)  

On top of learning about Native Americans all week, my kids delved into their creative, constructional sides and built a city (Gotham?) out of blocks...and of course, Batman if their hero. 

Future architects of America?...

 

 "Ha'u!" Get ready for...NATIVE AMERICANS!

Native Americans…

Native American Unit

This week, I will be talking about the many different Native American tribes. I'm so excited about this unit because we will be learning everything from what they ate to their contributions to American culture. My kids are starting off the fun-filled unit by making their very own Totem Poles depicting their favorite things and what they like.

Haunted Halloween Handwriting!

This Halloween handwriting packet was a great tool to get my kids excited about writing their letters and names... 

Dia de los Muertos

"Day of the Dead"

Sugar Skull

Last week, my students decorated "sugar skulls" in celebration for Dia de los Muertos. The "Day of the Dead" is a holiday celebrated by the Mexican culture on November 1st through 2nd. It's an exciting holiday filled with yummy foods and elaborate decorations.  

The theme for last week was pumpkins! My kids loved every "bite" of it too. Below are pictures of the different flavored pumpkin seeds we tasted. I made "sweet" pumpkin seeds and "salty" pumpkin seeds. Oddly, the majority of my kids liked the salty seeds better than the sweet! After they tasted the different seeds, we made a graph of our experiment and tallied up which kind of seeds people liked the most. This was the perfect activity to introduce my students to important math skills, such as graphing.  

We made mummy cookies for Fun-Food-Friday!!!

This week, we are focusing on the number twelve with colorful building blocks! 

My new popcorn wall...If only it were real! "Sweet kettle corn" wall possibly?

We're getting ready for Halloween!!! 

Can you tell I'm excited about our spider unit?! 

On Friday, we made super yummy spider treats fro Fun-Food Friday...and let me tell you, it was super messy too! Put a class full of kids together, a jar of chocolate icing, mix that in Oreo's and...whala, you have one big, yummy mess to clean up! But, all of the spiders turned out really cute, so it was well worth the mess.

High frequency words...spider-fied...

Some of my kids making their spider treat...

Throughout the week, my kids learned about the different parts of a spider. Okay, here comes the funny part...Last week, my kids learned about bats and owls. They learned their big word of the week, which was echolocation. So, at the beginning of last week, every time I had them identify the cephalothorax, they would all raise their hand and say, "cephalocation." ;) However, by the end of the week, they finally caught on to the correct pronunciation of the word. Whew! 

I was sooo excited about our spider unit that I even decided to have spiders painted on my toenails... 

 Getting my classroom ready for our haunted Halloween party! By the way, my Halloween decor can be found at Michaels for really cheap! 

Some of my favorite kiddos in the afternoon...

Upcoming: Arachnids and Creepy Crawlies

This Week: Spiders...and Creepy Crawlies!

Last week, my class learned about the wonderful, nocturnal world of bats and owls...truly amazing creatures of the night! 

Here's one of my students wearing an owl costume...hooty hoot!!!

Stellaluna

Did you know? Stellaluna is a fruit bat! She had a fabulous time eating lunch with my students last week...even though she missed out on the spaghetti, yummy lasagna, turkey rolls, etc. 

We're all batty!!!

Look...it's a real bat! Did you know? Bats do not have any feathers! They're the only flying mammals...wish I was as cool as a bat and could fly!

Here are the fruit graphs we did to see which fruit Stellaluna likes the most. Can you guess Stellaluna's favorite fruit? 

Owl hand print painting...

Here are the ingredients to make a nutritianal (semi-nutritional) hoot-tastic sandwhich...

• One bag of carrots (For nose and talons)
• One loaf of bread (for body of owl)
• Sliced cucumbers (for owl eyes)
• Hershey's kisses for the eye balls (I know it's not nutritional, but what can I say...I have a MAJOR sweet tooth!)

Look at our nutritional owl treats! I must say...they're hootilicious!