Pumpkin 🎃 Learning
Today was interesting as I watched the boys. They love to show power and try to lift heavy things. They tried so hard to lift up the huge white pumpkin.
First two boys tried. Then three boys tried to lift it. And then four boys tried to lift it. It was not budging .
Dirk started rolling the pumpkin around on the carpet. Eventually he rolled it over to the black container
and let it land on the edge of it and then pushed the Rubbermaid over tilting the pumpkin into it. “I got it guys!” Yes !!! You did! Such great problem-solving and thinking went into just ten minutes of play .
Later in the morning I noticed one of the boys had sorted the pumpkins. He had put the small white pumpkins together and had put the small orange pumpkins together. He lined be orange pumpkins up and started counting them- one, two, three, all the way to fourteen!
This would be a great time to remind you how I teach. If you build it they will come. lol
We watched a quick video on how pumpkins grow. Some of the vocabulary words we talked about were pollinate, stem, vine , and hollow.
Oh, and don’t forget the sink and float experiment we did today. First we started with small pumpkins. Then it progressed to cars. Probably a traditional teacher would say “ no you can not add cars- we are doing pumpkins.” But I look at an activity like that and think – why not? 🤷🏻♀️ I’m a little different. Some may call it Permissive-I call it “ willing to allow the children to develop their own ideas and build their own intelligence more than the capacity of my silly lesson plan.” The littles thought they were washing the pumpkins. Please don’t tell them it was a science experience. 🤣
We read a book by Gail Gibbons today caked “Pumpkin.” It had a lot of words but I improvised and hit the high points. Did you know there are male and female pumpkin plants? Did I read that right ?
Some of the children are getting in the habit of coming to tell me when something is wrong. ( tattle telling 🥴) In conscious discipline our immediate answer to that is ( if you can tell there’s no immediate danger) “are you being helpful or hurtful? Are you trying to keep someone safe or are you trying to get someone in trouble?” Honestly, it is usually the later. Then I say “what can you do to be helpful?” Sometimes they need the words to navigate the problem. Usually you already know what the problem is or you can walk and find out pretty quickly. If someone took a toy you tell them to say “ I had it first . Give it back. “ If they’re calling them name you tell them to say “ my name is Debbie call me Debbie.” ( example ) If they’re saying another child is not sharing… “ Oopsie you need to be patient. We don’t make children share. Tell them when you’re finished let me have a turn.” There are so many scenarios but they all boil down to advocating for ourselves and making sure everyone is safe and being helpful.