Donors Choose Treasure!

I recently received several Donors Choose grants and just wanted to share my excitement.  I have earned 4 grants this school year and have needed every one of the supplies given.  My first project was for CD players and books on CD.  My students loved being able to listen to books on CD that might have been above their reading level.  It has really encouraged many of them to choose books that they otherwise wouldn't have.    Several weeks later I was informed that another grant had been funded.  This time I received a class set of white boards.  Something a class can always use.  I recently read a blog post about using old whiteboards as a clip board by adding binder clips.  So we recycled the ones for this purpose.

In late March I received notification that I had gotten two more grants.  One was for expo markers to use with our white boards and the other was for five Kindles.  The students have not used the Kindles yet as I am hoping for cases for each of them.  Of course we will use the expo markers right away as we are always in need of them.  

If you haven't tried Donors Choose yet check it out.  Anyone who is a teacher is eligible to apply for a grant.  

Accerleated Reader

I have had a love/hate relationship with Accelerated Reader throughout my teaching career.  When I first began teaching it was required at my school but I had no idea how to motivate students to actually read each night.  This is when I really didn't like AR as I could not figure out how to make it successful for my students. 

Fast forward to my 14th year of teaching and I am blessed to be teaching in a school where Accelerated Reader is valued by my principal and all adults within the building.  When students go to the media center, the media specialist pulls up the students reading range information and students are not permitted to choose books that are not within their reading range.  Students are also required to check out two fiction and two non fiction books each week.  This ensures that students are reading a variety of genres throughout their elementary career. 

But of course how to motivate students seems to be the biggest hurdle for most teachers.   I am really excited to share with you the variety of ways in which I have encouraged my students to continue to read for the entire nine weeks and to reach their AR goal.  Many of them have gone beyond their goal and they will be rewarded for that as well.  Eighteen of my twenty-three students have met their goal this nine weeks with 85% accuracy or higher. 

First and foremost I make reading an AR book non-negotiable.  Students are reminded of this each morning when they enter the room.  I have a power point that is visible each morning and one of the items is about reading.  Here is an example:

Students see some version of this each morning which sends a clear message that reading is a priority within our classroom. 

Status of the Class

Status of the Class happens each afternoon after lunch.  Students are called to the back table one at a time and must show me their AR book and report what page number they are on.  I record it in my binder.  It is a great way to keep track of how long it is taking a student to read a book and provides me an opportunity to informally track who might need guidance on choosing books or who needs their reading levels adjusted.  Click here to download a free version of Status of the Class.  You will be amazed at how much this can improve your classes reading goals and how little time it will take once the routine has been established. 

Special Table

My grade level is fortunate enough to be the last lunch to eat each day.  This provides us the opportunity to be the only grade level in the cafeteria during our lunch time.  My grade level has established the special table as a reward for students who are at their weekly goal and have 85% accuracy on their AR reading.  I pull the report every Friday and determine who gets to sit at the special table.  Students at the special table do not have to spend the first ten minutes eating silently and can sit with classmates that they normally wouldn't get to sit with.  As an added bonus I provide a small treat to each student who has earned the right to sit at the special table that week. 

Raffle Tickets

Each time a student takes a test they have the opportunity to earn raffle tickets for our treasure box.   They love earning raffle tickets.  My system for keeping track of who earned tickets is simple students just write their name on the white board at the front of the room if I am unable to get their tickets immediately.  Students who earn a 100% on their test earn four raffle tickets, a 90% earns three raffle tickets and an 80% earns one raffle ticket.  Students who earn a 100% or 90% also earn a piece of candy.  Tickets placed in the treasure box are pulled each Friday and the students earn a small treat, usually a mini-tootsie roll or some other small piece of candy. The student who has the most points for the nine weeks and the student with the most points for that week also earn a special prize.  Here is my treasure box and the container that I keep my raffle tickets in. 

The Ten Surprise or more

The newest incentive is what it is called the ten surprise.  Students who earn 10 points over their goal are given a special treat bag.  Students can also earn a 20 surprise, a 30 surprise, etc.  My students will receive this for the first time tomorrow and they are so excited.  They don't even know what it is but they have worked so hard to earn one!  I just went to the Dollar Tree and filled a lunch bag with puzzles, pencils, and other little trinkets.  I cannot wait to see their faces when they get their reward tomorrow. 

I hope this will provide you with some ideas for making AR more enjoyable for your students.  After all as teachers we know that the way to become better readers is to read more.  For some students this seems to come naturally, for others not so much.  We have to find ways to encourage all students to read regardless of their reading ability.  Even the best reader can improve their reading by reading a wide range of books. 

If you have any great ideas for encouraging more reading please leave a comment with your ideas!

Marvelous Monday!

Our Monday was marvelous and we accomplished so much in one day!  

In math we began our unit on division.  We started with a fact family activity so that students could see the commutative property and the inverse operations of multiplication and division.  This was a great activity and lasted only about 15 minutes.  The kids loved it and begged to do another scoot activity soon!  You can find the free fact family activity here.  I used this recording sheet so that students knew exactly how they should record their fact families.  We practiced with several before I allowed them to complete the scoot activity on their own.   I love scoot activities as they allow students the opportunity to get out of their seat and walk around.  If needed, I may assign a student a partner if I feel that they need one in order to be successful.

Our math lesson continued with Skittles and of course the students loved the idea of candy!  We used our Skittles and little cups to divide.  The students were shown a word problem on the Smart Board and then counted out the total number of candies needed.  They used the little cups as their groups and then had to divide them evenly.  A great way to have a hands on math lesson.

We topped off our day by creating a door decoration for Red Ribbon Week.  Although the fire marshal won't let us actually hang it on the door.  I found this on Pinterest and loved it.  The template for the monster can be found here.  My students were so excited to do a "craft".  They enjoyed creating their monsters and we may spend an afternoon writing about our monster.

Hope you had a great Monday!

Beginning of the year and a blog makeover!

I can't believe that we have been in school for about 7 weeks already!  The time has really gone by so quickly.
I have fallen head over heals for my class this year.  They are all so sweet and willing to learn.  I have 16 girls and 4 boys, a combination I have never had before.  We have done some amazing things this year.  At the beginning of the year we Saved Fred.  The students loved this team building activity. There are plenty of Save Fred activities available at Teachers Pay Teachers   Check them out!

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Our district has a county wide fundraiser to bring awareness to reading.  Students, parents, teachers and members of the community take a "fun" walk -a-thon.  Money raised stays at the school it was earned at and is used to purchase additional materials for the media center.  My school has a penny war competition.  The classroom that raises the most money, in the form of pennies, wins a popcorn/bingo party.  My class was so excited to win!  Here is a picture of some of my students at the party.

I hope that everyone is enjoying their weekend!  I am off to make hubby an amazing dessert.

I am so happy with my recent blog makeover.  Megan at A Bird In Hand Designs did an amazing job and she handled everything including installing the designs!  

Currently January!

Well I am clearly late with this even though it is only January 2nd!  I have so enjoyed my winter break this year.  My husband and I usually travel home to see our son and his family, including my two granddaughters but this year we chose to stay home.  The trip is long and we often get bad weather on the way there and back.

Listening-I took the KLove 30 day challenge on the first day of June and haven't gone back to mainstream music since then.  It is very soothing music and now my husband and I can listen to the same music in the car.

Loving-I have so enjoyed my time off this year.  Hubby and I drove to Charleston, South Carolina and it was an amazing place.  We took a carriage ride, a dinner cruise and walked for miles.  We saw dolphins in the harbor-which I had never seen in the "wild" before.  I sure did miss seeing my granddaughters, though.

Thinking-Why is it that I always think I am going to get so much work done during break and that just never seems to happen?  I did get lots of rest and relaxation accomplishment which was great.  I wrote lesson plans for the next couple of stories in our basal, and did math plans for the week we return to school.  I guess that will have to be good enough.

Wanting-More time to finish our master bathroom remodel.  We bought a new house two years ago but it has taken us forever to agree on wall colors.  So far, we only have the master bedroom painted and are working on the bathroom now.  Hubby is having surgery at the end of this week so...it will be completed in about two months or so.  (Hopefully!)  Here is a picture of the chandelier that hubby graciously agreed to put up in bathroom for me.  There was a terribly ugly light there prior so I think he agreed just to get rid of the ugly one!

Needing-to finish the laundry that I started this morning.  Took a break and had a lunch date with my darling daughter.  I promised hubby that I would get the laundry done before he got home and as I write this he is pulling into the driveway.  All my stuff is neatly piled up for Monday, I just need to get into a bag.  

Yes maybe-Although I am going to miss the time at home with hubby I am so much better with a schedule and need to get back to it.  I have gained more than one pound while on break despite my best effort to walk daily.  No excuses going forward.  I need to make time for the treadmill each and every day no matter how much work I have or think I have.  

Hope everyone has enjoyed their break.  I hit the ground running Monday morning!

Math Strategies for multiplication and division

My class has been working on multiplication and division for several weeks now.  At times this has been a very painful standard.  Multiplication and division are major works of the fourth grade Common Core Standards.  Although students were exposed to basic multiplication facts in the third grade most of them do not come to 4th grade with mastery of basic facts.  My grade level is working on an incentive program to help the students master the basic facts before we begin our fraction unit.  

Each week students will be provided an opportunity to pass a test on their basic facts.  We are working on facts in a specific order starting with those that are doubles.  Last week we tested them on 2's and 4's.  Those who passed with at least 90% accuracy will get their name placed below the bowl at the far left of the bulletin board.  Those who didn't pass will attempt the 2's and 4's again on Friday as we work on 3' and 6's in class.  The goal is that all students will master their facts by the end of the nine weeks.  Here is a picture of our bulletin board.  

As you can see from the picture we are working on a sundae party.  Students have the opportunity to earn various parts of an ice cream sundae each week as they master the facts. The goal is that everyone will get two scoops of ice cream and sprinkles by the end of the nine weeks.  

We have also been working on division.  Unlike when I was a 4th grade student, students are required to master multiple strategies for what once was called long division.  My favorite strategy is to teach students the partial quotient method.  This strategy actually requires more higher level thinking as students really must understand place value in order to be successful.  

I had such a great lesson with one of my students last week involving this strategy.  This student is not on grade level in math and basic operations are often difficult for the student.  I pulled this student to a small group and we worked on two digit by one digit division using the partial quotient method.  I brought out a hundreds chart to assist the student in writing down the multiples needed for the division problem. This student also is allowed to use a multiplication chart to assist with the basic facts.   Students are required to write the needed multiplies along the side of the paper before beginning the actual division. I was so happy and proud that we were able to complete several division problems with the additional supports I put in place.   Here is a copy of our completed sheet.  

Have you tried the partial quotient method in your classroom?  Leave a comment and let me know if you had success with this strategy.

Save Fred!

Today was the second day of school and I decided that a little team building was in order.  I found this activity on the Internet several years ago but this was my first attempt at.  I found this blog post over at Growing a STEM classroom and it triggered my memory about this great activity. 

Fred is a gummy worm and his boat (the clear plastic cup) has capsized.  His life preserver (a gummy lifesaver) is still on his boat and he can't swim.  The students must use paper clips only to save Fred by getting his life preserver and putting it on him.  

I allowed my students to work with a partner for about 15 minutes to see if anyone could save Fred.  Several people dropped him-oh no he drowned!  Students were allowed to try again if they let Fred drown.  

Our wonderful Math/Science coach was also a partner for one of my students.  Here they are trying to get the life preserver from in the boat.  

After about 15 minutes I allowed the students to work in groups of four to see if that would be more successful.  This did help several groups.  

Fred has been rescued!

The students really enjoyed this activity and everyone was engaged.  They recorded their steps on a sheet of paper and wrote a description of how they saved Fred or what happened when he drowned.  

Here is a link to a free power point presentation that will allow you to explain this activity to your students.  Thanks to Karre Nevarez at Teacher Pay Teachers for this great product.  

We had a great time with this activity and not only does it teach problem solving it is also a great team building activity.  

Monday Made It!

Today was the first official teacher workday.  Although I had a meeting all day long I am still so excited to link up for my first ever Monday Made It.  I actually have two projects and can't wait to share them with you.  

This first one is actually a modified version of a blog post I read about over at Mrs. D's Corner.  It was actually her Monday Made it post dated July 28th. Click on her blog post above to see the original one.   I was super excited to try it but since I don't have a color printer I needed to modify it for myself.  I recreated her template and used colored card stock for the yellow one and a piece of chevron ( my classroom theme is chevron and school colors are orange and black) scrap book paper for the orange one.  Here is how mine turned out.  I am sending the yellow one to my best friend Nancy for her classroom.  

My second project comes from a post I found at More Time 2 Teach.   I found this blog post way back in December of last year and saved it so that I could create my own during the summer.  This is a Twitter board that students can use post it notes to respond to questions or discussions.  I use lots of exit tickets so I thought this would be a great place for students to place their post it note exit ticket at the end of a lesson.  I plan on using mine in a variety of different ways and think that the students will enjoy tweeting their answers.  

A big thank you to my wonderful hubby who made the straight lines for me.  I am  not good at making straight lines!  In each square there is a picture of a bird with a number-I use a number system for everything and then can reuse the board each year since student names are not in the squares.  The little bird clip art in the middle of each square came from Teachers Pay Teachers and was created by The Class of Joy.  Click on The Class of Joy to download your free copy. 

Hope you enjoy both of these Monday Made It projects.  

Organization

I was not born an organized person.  In fact when I began working at the age of 40 I realized that I probably suffer from adult ADHD (never officially diagnosed) as I recall all the projects I would begin during a day at home with my kids yet never manage to finish any of them.  I used to make lists but couldn't find them when I was ready to start working on something.

Therefore when I began my teaching career I had to work hard at becoming organized.  I believe that I have grown tremendously in this area and since moving to a new school last year I have attempted to keep only those items that I will truly use at school.  Hence, the reason the garage now looks like a disaster area.

Imagine my happiness when I found this great post over at Mrs. D's Corner.  She created a forever FREEBIE on her Teachers Pay Teachers page to go along with her Monday Made it craft.  I used her idea to create my own version since I don't have a color printer and am currently obsessed with chevron.  So I created my own template to use that I could put on the colored cardstock that I had, I also got a piece of orange chevron scrapbook paper given to me by a friend and used it to create my own plan, copy, prep and grade clipboard.  I followed Mrs. D's directions as I created my own. This was my first attempt at Mod Podge and I think it turned it pretty darn good.

Here is my final two clipboards.  I am going to send the yellow one to my best friend Nancy.  She doesn't read the Internet too much so I hope when it arrives it is a surprise!

 I am so excited to use this product.  A big shout out to Stephanie at Mrs. D's Corner for allowing me to post about my own version.

Summer is over!

Summer Schedule

At the end of the school year I posted my summer schedule.  It worked well and I have logged lots of miles on my Fitbit this summer.  I was able to keep to my schedule for the most part, with the exception of when I went to visit my beautiful granddaughters.  

Summer is almost over and I can't believe it.  I go back to work tomorrow to set up my room.  I have two days and then mandatory teacher workdays begin.  I am moving to a new classroom this year-literally next door to the one that I was in last year, but seems to have more space.  I am excited to get in there and get my things put together.  

Weekend plans

                         

Before the weekend is over I plan to see the new movie The Giver with hubby.  I am so excited to see this movie as the book is my favorite of all times.  I hope that the movie is close to the book I am always disappointed when the movie doesn't follow the book.  

Currently                   

Linking up with  Oh Boy 4th Grade for this month's August Currently!  I have not linked up every month but I love the idea and hope to do more of them this school year.  Check out Farley's blog if you want to link up with your Currently.

Random thoughts for the end of the year!

#1

The school year is finally over and I am starting to feel human again! This was an amazing year and I loved my new school.  I taught fourth this year after several years in a third grade classroom. I wasn't sure about 4th grade but really enjoyed it!  My students were awesome and I love the atmosphere at my new school.

I took a few days off after the last workday to decompress and am now in full swing with my summer schedule.  First thing I did was ordered myself a new school bag. While I was waiting for my new bag to arrive I cleaned out the old one.  I must have a hoarding problem because I found tons of pens in my bag.  Along with a large number of post it notes.

I don't know how to stop buying pens.  I actually ask for them for a birthday present.  Here is my new bag  from Thirty One gifts.  I love that it has my initials monogrammed on it and holds my laptop.

#2

Although I am happy to have summer break I am not good at unstructured time.  I made myself a summer schedule and put it in a table so that I can check off each item as it is completed!
Here is a picture of my summer schedule:

I have little boxes on the right hand side to check off each of my items.  It really helps me keep myself busy and stay on task.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer break.

Compare and Contrast with vocabulary words

Finally a blog post about reading!  This past week we read a portion of a story called, Riding Freedom.  My school uses Houghton Mifflin Journeys and the stories are incredible.  Each week we ask the students questions where they have to refer to the text to find or infer the answers.  The question was about vocabulary:    Based on paragraph 2 and 3 which word is similar to the word route?  Two of the choices were road and highway.  All the students chose the word road but I was curious to see if they could tell me the difference between the two words.  So we created a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the two words, compare and contrast was our skill for the week.  I would love to use this strategy with vocabulary words, I will need to create a list of words that I could use for this activity.  I was amazed at what they were able to come up with to compare the two words.

Here is our completed Venn diagram.  Let me know what you think.

Modeling Mixed Numbers

We have been working diligently on our fraction unit despite all the recent snow days we have experienced!  One recent lesson was adding two fractions with the result an improper fraction.  We needed to change our improper fractions into a mixed number.  My students really struggled with this lesson and I needed to find a way to help them visualize how the two fractions would form a mixed number.

After some thought I decided to create a worksheet with pictures that were rectangular arrays.  My colleague  suggested that the students color each portion of the fraction with a different color to help them visualize how the mixed number is made.

Here is a picture of the original sheet I created.  At the time it was quicker to hand write the sheet than to use the computer and make it look good.

Students were much more successful with the assignment once they could visualize how the mixed number was created by the two different colors on their worksheet.  I was very happy to see how well they did on the assignment.  The addition of color helped them to cement the concept of the mixed numbers.

Hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday afternoon.

Fraction Review

I saw this great post on the blog http://www.teachingwithtaskcards.com/2014/02/using-task-cards-in-interactive.html and decided that this would be a great way to use the worksheet that was to be independent practice for one of our fraction lessons.

I used the worksheet and retyped each question or problem into a table so that students would have eight small problems to glue into their math journal.  I hoped that the eight little problems would look less daunting to my students than a full worksheet page.  I guided students as to how to place and glue the "task cards" into their notebook and then explained how they would record their work. This is what they looked like after they completed each "task card".

Students worked with their partner to complete each task card.  Once again I heard some great math talk.  The problems on the left hand side of the notebook were comparing and ordering fractions.  The tasks on the right hand side were word problems.  I quickly realized that many students did not understand how to do one of the problems so we took a break and worked on that problem as a whole class.

This was a great way to use a worksheet in a new and more engaging way.  Thanks again to Mary from http://www.teachingwithtaskcards.com for the great idea!

Currently

I have finally figured out how to post the Currently status that everyone else appears to already know how to do.  I am linking up with Farley to join in on the fun.

Listening:  This is our second round of snow in eastern North Carolina.  We had four days off two weeks ago.  Went to school for a week and then a Monday and now we are on day three of this round of snow days.  We are supposed to have off for six days at Easter for our spring break and I am getting worried.  I think that we will most likely make up the days on Saturdays.  (Not too happy about that-but better than loosing our spring break).  This is our first big snow storm in our new house and I am loving it!

Loving:  Hubby works for the school district as an HVAC (heating and air conditioning) technician so he is also home.  We have spent time just hanging out, doing laundry, cooking and cleaning. Plus lots of Hallmark Channel movies!  If we have off tomorrow we will be together all day for Valentine's Day as well.  I already bought his card and a box of candy so that is probably all we will do to celebrate due to the weather.  

Thinking:  I have done some school work but at some point you just need to veg out!  Does writing my blog post count as school work?

Wanting:  I want to know if there is school tomorrow.  I love taking afternoon naps but can't do that if I have to work the next day. With no kids at home we can do this whenever we like!  I like long naps and then I can't get to sleep at night.  Hopefully we will know soon.  

Needing:  We finally have a treadmill in our fitness room and I have been using it each day.  I have also started "running" on it.  I am not too confident with this yet.  

2 truths and a fib:  

Truth-I met my husband when I was 14.  He was a volunteer in a nursing home that my mother worked at and she volunteered me to help the nursing patients go on a trip to the local mall.  I thought he was the cutest guy I had ever seen.  We just celebrated 31 years of marriage!

Truth-I want to apply for the math instructional coach position available in my building next year so I need to learn the standards for math K-5!

Fib-I don't drink coffee or any caffeine.  I haven't had caffeine for about 3 years now.  

Be sure to join the party and link up with Farley from Oh' Boy Fourth Grade!

Equivalent Fraction and a great review strategy

Happy snow day!  Believe it or not this is our fifth snow day this school year.  Here in eastern North Carolina we rarely get snow days just an occasional hurricane day every couple of years.

Since we have had so many snow days we are really behind in our fraction unit so I decided to review equivalent fractions with a great review strategy that I found at my friend Mandy's blog at http://the4thgradejourney.blogspot.com/.  

I used a previously created worksheet to review equivalent fractions.  It is designed in a tic tac toe board and I chose this particular worksheet because it begins with pictorial representations and ends with abstract examples where students have to apply the math skills taught to identify equivalent fractions.  As you can see in the picture they did have fraction bars if they needed that concrete manipulative to help them solve the problems.  Students worked on the assignment independently and as they worked I passed out red and green algebra tiles for the review part of the lesson.  

Once students completed the task we reviewed each problem together on the Elmo.  As we discussed the answer to each problem they placed a green tile on the problem if they got it correct and a red tile on the problem if they got it incorrect.  Once we reviewed the whole sheet they were required to write the fraction for the number of problems they got correct at the top of the paper.  I went around the room and checked each students fraction to make sure that they wrote it correctly. If they did I gave them a piece of candy!

The students really enjoyed the activity and the self-check and immediate feedback was a hit!

Now if we ever get back to school we can continue on our fraction journey.

Equivalent Fractions

We started our fraction unit a week late due to a rare four days off for snow.  We don't get much snow in Eastern North Carolina so just 2-3 inches caused students to have off for four days!

We began the week by discussing whether or not 1/4 and 2/8 were the same.  We used paper folding to determine if they were the same number.  During our next lesson we used a Meaningful Math Task created by our district curriculum specialist.  The task was:

My students sit with a partner throughout the day, partners are grouped according to abilities so that students can learn from one another and get support as needed.   The lesson began by displaying the Math Task on the SmartBoard and students were given fraction bars to assist them in visualizing how to determine which person had the best plan for sharing the brownies.  The math talk was very interesting and diverse.  Just from listening to the students talk with their partners it was clear who had a grasp of the concept and who would need additional support.   Several students struggled with the fact that denominators were not the same or that there were more pieces in the brownies that were cut in sixths and twelfths.  
I heard one of my students clearly tell his partner that the fractions were all the same because the fraction bars all lined up so therefore they had to be the same or equivalent.  Here are pictures of how the students worked out the problem with their partners.

Students spent about 10 minutes working with their partner to determine if the fractions were equivalent.  We then discussed how many brownies each person would get for each of the three plans listed in the task.  This discussion allowed us to generate a list of equivalent fractions and students recorded these in their math journals.  

This was a great way to introduce students to the concept of equivalent fractions.  The use of the fraction bars gave students the opportunity to visualize what the pieces of brownies would look like. Allowing students to begin with a concrete representation before moving to a pictorial and eventually abstract representation is the best way to engage students in math concepts that can be very difficult to comprehend.  

We ended the week by playing a great game called Take Away game with smartie candies.  The students enjoyed the game.  

Hope you enjoy this activity with your students.

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!