Pumpkin Carving

 Happy Wednesday! Trays full of huge, sweet potatoes and a very big pumpkin greeted us in class today. We got excited to draw sweet potatoes while looking at real sweet potatoes! It was amazing that our friends who were not able to make it yesterday looked at the potatoes and noticed things about them, such as “they have long hairs”, “they have full of dots”, “the color is a bit purple and brown”, “these potatoes have sticks on top sticking out”. And our friends who went to the potato dig happily showed their friends how they dug the potatoes and shared the bugs that they saw!

            For free play, we had lots of fun exploring dyed rolled oats, building towers, houses, and buildings and dinosaurs. We just love whenever we have opportunities to work with our small muscles in our fingers, and at the same time enjoy the moments with our friends😊

CIRCLE TIME

            It was great to count our friends in four languages (English, Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese). Then we moved on to singing our Hello song that gave us an opportunity to share what our feelings inside were. We looked at our kimochis or feelings cards on the wall and got so excited to choose which one was close to our feelings. We had some silly, excited, super happy, and loved feelings.

            Now we’re ready for rhyme time! In the beginning, we sang our rhyme song using our names then sang it altogether in our version of Down by the Bay. We really love singing this song repeatedly! Our drawing that talks about our rhyme makes it extra special, too!

            For story time, we read Pumpkin Patch, a story about Lynn Martin Snowden, illustrated by Kyle Sydney Powell. When we read the story, Nimo and Ra were not in the room. So, when they came back, we were more than happy to retell the story to them. Retelling the story was a good way of reflecting what we thought the meaning of the story was. Some ideas were the ones in the story, while some were great to be a sequel of the book😊 Here’s how we did in retelling the story:

            U: Someone steal the pumpkins. The big one was too big and heavy, so they stick an umbrella in it.

            Ch: Someone step on it and put an umbrella.

            A: Police catch the bad guy and put them in the dungeon.

            N: A man take the pumpkin and they got another one and squashed it!

            Au: Pumpkins. Eat.

            Me: The lady take it. The neighbor did it.

            Ch: Everyone picked the seeds, planted them, and grow them.

            N: Everyone in town was surprised when they see her crying.

            Ai: Bad guy steal the pumpkins.

  We jumped off the floor and enjoyed singing and dancing to some Halloween songs. We enjoyed pretending to be different kinds of Halloween character! Speaking of Halloween, we noticed the huge pumpkin sitting on table. We had lots of fun and discovery as we used our senses when we took out the seeds and pulp of it. We did not imagine that the inside of a pumpkin would feel so gooey, but not yucky! Some of us thought that the pumpkin smelt delicious, too!

            We were quite surprised to learn that we can eat pumpkin seeds. We were so excited when Vieda told us that perhaps we can roast the seeds. N immediately said, “My mommy only roasts chicken and meat. Not pumpkin seeds”. It seems like most of us in Flowers have not tried roasted pumpkin seeds yet. Let’s enjoy roasting and eating pumpkin seeds tomorrow!

            Now that we had taken the seeds and pulp out of the pumpkin, what should we do with our pumpkin next?

            Ai: Cut the eyes and mouth.

            K: Draw and then cut.

            D: Draw the body.

            Ch: Cut the eyes, nose, and mouth. Put lantern inside so we can make Jack-o-lantern.

            U: We can put color on it.

            M: Nimo cut it and we eat it, like a mango!

  Amazing ideas! Here’s what we were going to do. Nimo told us that we would work together to carve our pumpkin. We made teams of 3 friends where each of us would draw, cut, and carve. We were so thrilled as we used different kinds of carving tools to make our very own Jack-o-lantern! Our pumpkin should of course get a name, too! Several names were suggested such as, Pumvee, Aiden, Bee Bee, Ohana Seed, Ohana Pumpkin, Ohana, Circle Pumpkin, and Star Pumpkin. Guess which one did we picked? It’s Star Pumpkin! Nimo put a candle inside and a beautiful Jack-o-lantern lit our room! Everyone did a very great job in making Star Pumpkin a real star😊

            See you all tomorrow!

 Love,

Flowers