The Great Pumpkin Caper and a trophy too!

My new school is located in a small town and is considered the local elementary school.  At the beginning of October I was told that every classroom would receive a free pumpkin and that we would need to decorate it for a pumpkin contest.  One of the rules of the contest was that the pumpkin could not be cut in any way and had to have a title or name.  I was intrigued and the competitor in me decided to keep my ideas top secret in order to win the contest.
I searched the web for an idea on how to decorate a pumpkin to look like a tiger-our school's mascot.  I found one on pinterest.  Here is the link to the original page-http://thecraftyhostess.com/?p=1801 
I explained to my students that we were going to enter the contest and told them that our design should remain top secret so that no one copied us.  One parent and a grandparent were kind enough to donate a tiger tale to us.
My husband and I created a prototype of the tiger at home over the weekend before we would do the project in class.  Here are the pics.  This is how we got started-hubby was my assistant.  Before we glued the candy I made the nose and white part of the eyes with acrylic paint.  Then I used a thick black sharpie marker for the inside of the eyes and the whiskers.

Here are pictures of the pumpkin as it progressed to being done!

The picture directly above was the final product.  Until about an hour later and I realized he didn't have any ears.  So now he is done.

I took the prototype to school so that the kids could see what it was supposed to look like.  I had a parent volunteer come in one morning and she helped the students glue the candy corn onto the pumpkin with a hot glue gun.  Each child had a chance to put some of the candy corn on the pumpkin.  I put the face, ears, and tail on prior to bringing it to school.  Here is the one we made in class.

We won second place in the pumpkin contest!

The students really enjoyed creating the pumpkin and were thrilled when the guidance counselor came with the pumpkin and our trophy!

Great Math Resource

Great resource from North Carolina Department of Instruction.

I had forgot about this great resource until I went searching for a game I wanted to use for place value.  NCDPI has a great site with math resources.  Although the resource is not specifically based on Common Core there are some great games, etc. that will work for grades 3-5.  Check out the resources at:  http://mathlearnnc.sharpschool.com/cms/One.aspx?pageId=5051238

All of them are available as a PDF file so you can save them for future use.  Each week features specific objectives and has some sort of game or activity to reinforce the objective.  

Hope you find it helpful!