What an amazing day! This trip was exciting, active, entertaining, and a learning experience! We could have stayed all day! It was THAT fun! It is definitely a do-over!

When we got to the farm we saw where the pumpkin patch was. We saw the left over pumpkins rotting in the patch. We saw lots of Christmas trees! Most were big, but we noticed little ones too. New ones were planted where old ones had been cut. We searched and searched, but we finally decided on the just-right tree. Then, Mr. Santulli, (lucky us, a great music teacher and an expert bus driver and tree cutter!) cut it down for us. He somehow miraculously got it on the bus (and later into our classroom too!} Whew! Mrs. Kolotos was not looking forward to that part of the day!

Then we got to explore! Helicopters! Animals! (Oh and lots of animal poo to discuss!) A big patch of acorns to “ice skate” on. Huge, long, slippery, slides! A creek! Bridges! An amazing playscape! A whispering pine playground!

Oh, and the bus! We were so excited going, it was very loud on the bus. But going back to FA, we were TIRED! It was definitely more quiet. In fact, quite a few of us fell asleep. Then back to school where we ALL crashed!

What an absolutely perfect, wonderful, amazing, best-day-ever, field trip! Even the teachers said so! 

Our study of food culminated in an awesome feast. Each student brought their favorite food to share. We had spaghetti, empanadas, mac and cheese, french fries, corn, chicken nuggets, meatballs, and pumpkin pie.  What bounty! No-one went home hungry from this table!

We have enjoyed learning about food. We played some fun games to help us distinguish fruits from vegetables. We also enjoyed the finger plays and songs about vegetables, turkeys, and spaghetti, that we learned! Learning a few signs from American Sign Language was exciting too. We know ASL for gather, oven roasting, pie, table, floor, door, garden and spaghetti!

From food to holidays. Wait — don’t those overlap? Oh, well, we are so excited to begin our study of December holidays!

…Who wants to play dreidel? And eat latkes?

We had a wonderful first off campus field trip to the Fredericksburg Area Museum (FAM) where we learned about the Powhatan People, the first people that lived in Virginia. We learned about weehawken, the Powhatan style of home. We got to see and touch authentic tools, played some Powhatan children’s games, and saw how corn was ground for corn meal. It was a fun experience. But you know what we loved the most? Yep! The bus! Riding on the bus was SO exciting. Our teachers thought our faces appeared illuminated we were so happy! Oh, and running around in Market Square was pretty awesome too!

We took advantage of the beautiful autumn day on Wednesday and went for a walk in the woods. We had loads of fun before we even got to the woods, singing in the tunnel (Happy Birthday to Jayce!), walking like turkeys, and checking out every fence, bench and bleacher. When we got to the woods we discovered a story walk. We had to move from place to place to find out what would happen next. And in between, what a blast we had exploring the woods! We found lots of leaves. We saw acorns and fungus, ferns and mushrooms! It was all beautiful and so much fun to experience hands-on! We found a creek, some bridges and lots of down trees. We didn’t find any poison ivy, but just in case, we learned a poem about it. “Do not touch the hairy vine, or you will itch for a long, long time.” We left our classroom at 10:30 and didn’t get back until 12:30! We walked a lot, but we didn’t complain. Making that final climb up “Tired Hill” was hard, but we made it. Then we had to collapse for a quick rest before the trek back through the tunnel and across campus. It was exciting being an explorer. We all agreed that the woods are fun and we can’t wait to go back! We think we’ll go again in a couple of weeks to see how the trees have changed. The sound track to our slides is so appropriate! Take time to think, take time to thank, take time to play!

We had 100% voter turnout at today’s election! We each cast our ballot in secret as we voted for tacos or pizza. After we made our choice, we folded our ballots and carefully put them in the ballot box. Then we got an I VOTED sticker. After all the ballots were cast we tallied up the election results. It began very close. There were four votes for pizza and three votes for tacos. Then pizza took off and it was a landslide! We ended with eight for pizza and three for tacos!  No one was too upset though, because we all like pizza too! (Thanks to Sam’s Pizza on Lafayette for giving us a great discount and a very fun lunch!) What an exciting first voting experience!

In typical FAmily style our Halloween Party was a huge success! Thank you for all the interest and support. Thank you for the beautiful snacks, and your flexibility concerning our activities. Thank you for the cupcakes, the fruit-vomiting watermelon, the crispy treat cups, the adorable mock pumpkins, the all time favorite salty snack, the banana ghosts and the wonderful treat bags! Thank you for deliveries and instructions. Thank you for forgiving the teacher mis-steps. The children had so much fun! We had a parade, albeit different from anything in the past, fun food, excellent activities, a little fun showing off to our room parents, then some dancing, and some games. We had nothing to compare it to, so for us, it was an awesome and fun-filled day! (One more Halloween themed video coming your way on Tuesday!)

We’ve been busy getting our halls decorated for Halloween. We’ve made all kinds of spooky things, from footprint ghosts to cracked jack-o-lanterns! But today we concentrated on our pumpkin. Turning our pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern was very exciting. First we all voted on what we wanted. The choices were to carve it into a cat or a face. When the votes were tallied, the cat won! Then everyone took a turn at “scooping the goop.” Well… kind of. Some of us really got into it and enjoyed digging in with our hands and pulling out seeds. Some of us loved playing with the goop and the seeds on the table. Some of us loved playing with the carving tools. Some of us could only be convinced to take one swipe with a very careful aim! After we got it pretty clean, Mrs. Kolotos carved it into the spooky cat! Seeing it lighted was the most fun of all and everyone enjoyed that! We got to have it lighted for our quiet time! This is all so exciting, we can’t wait for Halloween!

Our learning unit on colors culminated with Rainbow Day and the compilation of our color books. When we put our Rainbow Books together, we were amazed at all the work we had done. We enjoyed sorting and placing each item. We were very excited to bring them home and share them with our families. We loved Clifford, our bananas and our wallets the most! Our coloring and cutting skills have improved by leaps and bounds. Rainbow day highlighted just how much we have grown in less than 30 days!