Cranberry investigation sheet

 

I created this with a little help from google (for the pics of cranberries and waves) and from DJ Inkers.  Click here to download.  :)

Thanksgiving part 1 - Pilgrims and Cranberries

 We started our Thanksgiving unit last week and here are a few highlights.  Above our the pilgrims we created after reading about the first Thanksgiving.  We compared life then to life now and talked about what chores the children did then and now. 

I purchased Deanna's Thanksgiving unit from TPT and incorporated the chores page.  Her unit it totally cute.  My students really enjoyed her story. 

We also did something different this year with cranberries!!!!
The kids just loved it.  We first looked at one and wrote some adjectives. 

 Then we did a little investigation to see if they floated or sank.  We even got to practice wet harvesting our cranberries.  They got a kick out of this.  (no pic - sorry)

 

Then we made cranberry sauce!

 We made the cranberry sauce, then tasted it, tasted jellied cranberry sauce (from a can), and dried cranberries.  We then decided which was our favorite.  Next year I think I am going to bring in some cranberry juice as well.

Our on going science experiment is to see which seed sprouts first - pumpkin seeds or corn.  (This was also in Deanna's unit)  So far nothing yet - but it's fun to see them check it every day.

PUMPKINS

Our pumpkin.  I had 3 donated to our class.  We carved one, added stickers to this one, and the other we counted the seeds and measure how many cubes tall it was.

These are our pumpkins.  They were on a vine protected by a scarecrow, but I forgot to take a picture.  It was too cute...next year I guess.  I had the kiddos paint a pumpkin with orange paint.  Then we added glitter and let it dry.  We then added a stem and leaf and put them on the vine.  They turned out super cute.

This is our pumpkin tree map that we filled out together.

We used the tree map to write about pumpkins.  They did a great job.
Click HERE to get your own pumpkin writing page.

I saw this on another blog, Welcome to Room 36, but Jessica did it with apples.  I changed it to pumpkins and we measured our selves and compared our results.

I also saw this brace map too and decided to try it with my kinders.  We did it step by step together and they turned out super!

Living and nonliving

We included a living and nonliving unit this year about bears.  We talked about real bears and teddy bears.  We even ended the week bringing in bears and reading in our caves. (under our tables).

Sorting our bears.

Comparing bears and teddy bears

I saw this on Mrs. Lee's blog and thought hey - why not label the bears parts.  Then I had the kids do it in their science notebook.