The Great Pumpkin Conundrum

We had a big problem in Kindergarten today. We wanted to paint pumpkins but there was NO ORANGE PAINT! How on earth can we make pumpkins with no orange paint? I posed this predicament to my littles and with her index finger in the air MJ exclaimed "We can MAKE it!"
Well. That would be game changing.
When I asked how we could do that, I got a lot of "You should mix some colours together!"
Hmm, I wondered what colours we should use. Neo was convinced that "we need to mix red with a different colour to make orange," Many of his peers agreed,
I said "Well I have blue... would that work?"
"Noooo!" (And even a few "that would make purple!")
Hayden shouted "Red would work!"
"Okay, I have red. What other colour should we use? I have purple...-"
"No!!"
Finally Vander stood up. "You need to use yellow."

I thought that was a great plan, and so did most of the littles. Check out the progression of our pumpkins in the photos below. (And it goes without saying that the best way to do a colour mixing experiment is with your fingers...or hands, and forearms in some cases.)

P is for Pumpkin

It has been a very busy few weeks! With Thanksgiving, Fire Safety week, school photos and initial assessments all wrapped up, I have finally found a minute to post.
The Kinders and I have been exploring individual letters of the alphabet. We started with A and B, but when the opportunity presented itself, we skipped over to P.
When I say "the opportunity presented itself," I mean two of my students' mom thoughtfully donated a ton of coloured pumpkin seeds to our classroom.

This is just a fraction of the seeds!

I decided it would be fun to use the seeds to create a letter...even better, to create the letter that Pumpkin (seeds) begins with!

With each letter we have and will explore, we begin by brainstorming a list of words that begin with said letter. Did you know there are a LOT of animals that begin with the letter 'P'? Did you also know that drawing animals is not my forté? As the students come up with the words, I do my best to keep up and record what they say, along with a picture. 

Not included...panther, platypus, parrot, poodle, pig, piglet

After we looked at how a 'P' was made, I gave all of the littles a piece of black cardstock on which I had photocopied an upper-case 'P' and a lower-case 'p.' (Did you know you can photocopy black Sharpie onto black cardstock!?) They each got a small paintbrush, and I put little containers of white glue at each table (a method which I find a lot less time consuming than the bottles...because I don't have to unclog any lids with a paperclip.) I filled a pie pan with a handful of each colour of seed and let them have at it!

Some kids created patterns, some used all the same colour, and some went completely random, They all turned out great!

Stay tuned for more ABC fun!

Red, Green and Yellow

Apples that is! Another activity courtesy of Mrs. Skinner, we did apple tasting yesterday. I was amazed at how engaged the students were for the whole time, especially watching me chop up the apples for us to eat. (I didn't want to worry about them turning brown, so I'm glad my knife skills were of interest to the littles!) 

Since 'tis the season for apples, we tried 3 different kinds/colours. Red, Green and Yellow - or as several of the kids pointed out, to my surprise - Red Delicious, Granny Smith and Golden Delicious. 

Another bonus of cutting the apples then and there, was that we had the opportunity to examine and discuss the different parts of the apples, skin, seeds, flesh and stem.

I jotted down a few of the very insightful comments some of the littles made during our observations...

"The stem attaches the apple to the tree." - Leland

"If you want to grow red apples, you put the red seeds (from the red apples) in the ground!"- Carter

"The skin is what makes it green, and the skin is very good for your teeth!" - Mackenzie-Jayne

And while we tasted the each type of apple, I told the students to think about what was different in their mouths while they chewed. I was impressed with their remarks...

"The green one is delicious, but a little bit sour." - Neo

"The red one was juicier than the green one." - Keaton

"Sweet!" - Lilie, about the yellow apple

"I like all of them!" - Ainsleigh

After we were done tasting, the students thought about which apple was their favourite, and we showed our choice on the smart board by moving our names into our preferred apple. I was pleased to see that each type of apple ended up with about the same number of names.

There were a few apples leftover, so I cut them in half and quarters and set up an "apple print" centre.

And of course, the reality of eating apples in Kindergarten, somebody is bound to lose a tooth! :-)