Blog Hoppin': Busy with Owls and Pumpkins

Hi Friends! It's Stacy from Mrs. Johnson's First Grade wanting to quickly share some fun ideas we have done to celebrate Fall and Halloween so far this month. This was actually something I had done a few years ago and wanted to bring it back again this year because it was so much fun!

I try to keep Halloween about fun rather than "scary" for my First Graders because I do have a few every year who don't celebrate it. We had been learning about nocturnal animals so I ordered Owl Pellets from pellot.com again to learn more about owls. It comes with posters and skeleton maps! The students got to match the bones they found to the bone map to find out what their owls ate.

We also used Pumpkin seeds to practice counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. This activity also introduced them to Place Value as they worked to find out how many seeds were in their pumpkin. This was a 2 day activity.
Day 1: We emptied out the pumpkins and washed the seeds.

Next, I read them the story "How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?" by Margaret McNamara and Brian Karas. This got them thinking how they might count the seeds.

I took the seeds home and baked them so they were ready for them to count the next day.

Day 2: The class decided that counting by 10's would be the easiest and fastest way to count them. I gave them little cups to hold their groups of 10 and larger cups to hold groups of 100.
It's pretty simple and easy to do. Plus it gets the students working together and having fun!