October Newsletter, 2020 Brown-Prestas

Dear Parents,

Classroom News

In October we learned about apples and pumpkins. The children used three part language cards to match different types of pumpkins and the life cycle of an apple. They manipulated an apple part puzzle, counted small, plastic apples from one to ten, and the older children liked to trace the apple puzzle.

We had an apple tasting party which was a huge hit and tasted three types of apples-rave, granny smith, and tango. We dissected an apple crosswise to observe the star pattern and the apple seeds sleeping inside the pockets. We made a chart of the three types of apples, discussed their color, texture, and taste (sour, sweet, juicy).

Mrs. Brown did a fun science experiment with a large pumpkin. She had the children take turns filling small pitchers of water to pour into a very large container. When the container was filled, she then asked the children if the huge pumpkin would sink or float. Imagine the surprise when the children found out that this huge pumpkin would float despite being so heavy! 

Another activity we did was to open a small pumpkin to see how many seeds were contained in it. We had a lot of guesses and we actually counted all the seeds which amounted to 98 in this little pumpkin.

Books We Read This Month

Apples for Everyone by Jill Esbaum (National Geographic Kids)

Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin Pie by Jill Esbaum (National Geographic Kids)

How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? By Margaret McNamara

Apples by Gail Gibbons

An Apple Fingerplay

Two little apples hanging in a tree

Two little apples smiling at me

I shook that tree as hard as I could

Down came the apples

Mmm-were they good!

Happy Autumn,

Ms.Prestas and Mrs. Brown