Christmas Tree Brownies

On Friday, we watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and then we got to decorate our very own "Charlie Brown Christmas Trees"!

We started with triangle brownies:

 

Added candy cane "trunks" and green icing:

And then finished them off with some sprinkles!

Making Handprint Christmas Wreaths

Making Applesauce

Quick poses before starting :-)

Cutting up the apples!

Say "APPLE!!!"

Using a Victorious strainer to make our applesauce!

All done and ready to be served!

The elementary students were quite thrilled to help us eat all the applesauce!

Week 9 in Pictures

Last week we did some fun activities! On Monday, we made animal puppets with Miss Briar. On Wednesday we did some Apple prints. We took apple halves, dipped them in some paint and pressed them over and over again on paper. What a fun and messy activity! On Friday, the Elementary joined us as we made some "acorn people". We had a lot of acorns to decorate!!!

 

Chalkboard Drawings

Letting our imaginations soar!

"Bunnies going to church"

On left: "A Submarine, Snake and Snowman" On right: "A rocket ship getting ready to take off!"

"A dragon, snake, scorpion and wolf scorpion"

Washing down the chalkboard afterwards - Work can be fun when we do it together!

Baking Cookies!

We made Caramel Apple Cider cookies yesterday - the perfect fall treat! If you would like the recipe, click here.

Adding all the ingredients!

Mixing the ingredients!

Adding the caramels to the cookie dough

Rolling out our cookie dough balls!

All done! Ready to put them in the oven!

While we waited for the cookies to bake and cool, we colored our Social Studies page about bakers, and made "cookies" with our play dough.

The cookies were really yummy! We were able to share with our friends.

Bunnies!

We had our first Show & Share today, and Joshua's Mom brought in his bunnies! Talk about setting the bar high for Show & Share days after this. :-)

Meet My Students

For the first 2 days of school, we worked on our "Welcome to Kindergarten" bulletin board. Each student had their own "All About Me" poster to complete. Each category was a different shape they could color, cut out and glue to their poster.

A Farewell Fish Party!

You may remember our class pet from last year, Mr. Jasper Smiles? He joined us again this school year. His place of honor was on the testing table in the middle of the Elementary Learning Center.

With the winter months quickly approaching us, I really didn't want to arrive at school one day and find the poor guy frozen stiff. I decided that I would take him home for the winter months where I had better control of room temperature. :-)

Because I was taking him home, we decided to have a goodbye party for Jasper yesterday. (So much better than a funeral!) The students have grown quite attached to the little guy, and the older ones were always excited when it was their turn to feed him.

We went all out for this party! In the morning we went down to the kitchen and made blue Jell-O, putting it in a fish bowl (a BRAND NEW one!). Each student got to stir and dump something in the bowl. About an hour or 2 later we added Swedish fish to "swim" around in the blue Jell-O.

While the kiddos did their schoolwork, I was down in the Kindergarten classroom decorating for the party - complete with blue balloons, green streamers, and party hats. Jasper even got his own place of honor!

Later in the day, the students came downstairs. We had so many fun activities planned, but unfortunately, not everything could get done. However, we did decorate our party hats with fish stickers, read a story called "A Fish Out of Water", play a game called "A Fish Out of Water", taste test different fish crackers, and enjoy the blue Jell-O with Swedish Fish. The students had all written notes to Jasper, but we ran out of time to read them to him. I will have to promise to read them to him later on. Oh the things we do for a fish!! He has no idea how much he is loved. :-) One of my favorite notes I helped one of the first graders compose goes like this:

"Dear Mr. Jasper Smiles,

Can you not get frozen this winter? I really really like you but you have to go now. I will miss you!"

You know you are a teacher when you are not ashamed to wear a party hat to a farewell party for a fish! :-)

Pumpkin Day!

On Friday we had Pumpkin Day at school! Students dressed in orange in celebration. The big excitement of the day was cutting open a pumpkin, digging out the seeds, and guessing how many there were inside.

Getting ready to cut open the pumpkin!

Beware! Stand back! Miss Follett has a knife!

 Time to dig out the seeds!!

 

 

Love their reactions!

Time to guess how many seeds are in the pumpkin!

Samantha was our winner! And yes, I counted the 588 seeds while they were out at recess. It was good for me :-)