Autumn - our style!

So... back to school tomorrow after a fun holiday - and a fairly productive one too. I had an autumn-filled half-term break despite the fact that we don't really have autumn here! No trees change color on a tropical island and it remains hot and humid (in fact today is pretty disgusting!) so we kind of have to experience autumn vicariously in the classroom. :)

I love autumn. I like the poems, the colors, the imagery, the art ideas - it's such a great season - so I spent half term making autumn themed activities for my class. We will SUBMERGE ourselves in Autumn!

I'm re-doing my anchor trays for the second half of term with autumn themed activities - autumn math problems, autumn writing activities, autumn general knowledge; I'll do lots of autumn art to add to the pumpkins and leaves we already have scattered around and I'm going to start the 2nd half of term off tomorrow with autumn math centers.

We're reviewing symmetry and polygons, place value and time and I decided to introduce weight in grams and kilograms by weighing pumpkins and answering questions about them. I thought it was a great idea so I wrote the worksheets, got the scales, printed and copied everything and then went looking for my 5 pumpkins.

Wouldn't you think that just a couple of days after Halloween there would be pumpkins galore? Well, there aren't! In fact, I couldn't find a pumpkin ANYWHERE.

Zero. Zilch. Nada. NO pumpkins.

So we're weighing winter squash (sigh).

It's not quite the same (despite the pretty colors) but it will have to do. I hope they last until tomorrow - sadly one of them is already growing a little blue mold coat (it really IS humid today!) so he's been scrubbed and dried and is warming next to the stove. (Hope he doesn't cook before Math class!)

We'll see how it goes - grams and kilograms are always a little tricky the first time round. Last year we started by weighing the class tortoise but hopefully "pumpkins" will be just as much fun.

This is the activity we're doing - it's nothing fancy but if you'd like it a freebie then just click the link. :)

*freebie link*

I like my autumn task cards - and these (once they're cut up and laminated) will keep my speedy finishers occupied for a while. Plus I can use them as one-on-one support for some of the kiddies which will be helpful. Here's an example of what they look like in their pre-cut state. :)

And of course, even though Thanksgiving is not a national holiday here, a lot of my kiddies have American parents or grandparents and will celebrate the holiday. So we'll do some Thanksgiving-themed activities too. :)

I'm definitely doing Turkey's Thanksgiving Feast with my girls because they love open-ended projects. I'm donating all the proceeds from this project to Pencils of Promise (you can read about the organization here if you are interested) so if you'd like to share the project that would be great. :)

Hope everyone has a fun-filled and non-stressful week :) Happy Autumn!!