Our Pre-Kindergarten English class celebrated Halloween in a very special project-based way this year. Our English teacher( Moira Simes) worked with us in making our own slime and ice gummy worms, painting black spiders from egg cartons, cleaned out a carved pumpkin and planted the seeds in a pot. With the help of our teacher, we mixed white glue, detergent and baking soda to make slime. We really enjoyed playing with the sticky slime. We also learned the process of water turning into ice and then melting once it is in liquid. To make it more interesting and permanent in our minds, we put gummy worms into an ice tray and waited a day for it to freeze and become ice. The following day we took the ice out and put it in a big jug of water. We had to wait a couple hours until it melted and then we stuck our hands into the jug and explained to our teacher how it felt. It was definetly slimey! Next, we made spiders from egg cartons. We painted them black and pasted googly eyes and six pipe wires as legs. Our spiders were hung from the ceiling in our classroom. We sang the Incy Wincy spider as we worked on our craft.
Our Pumpkin project was also a great hit. After our teacher carved a face on the pumpkin it became a jack-o-lantern and we cleaned out the seeds from inside. While the lack-o-lantern was put on display in the classroom, we planted the seeds into a pot and watered every week. One week later we observed the pot and were very excited to see the fast growth of the pumpkin seed.
Finally, we went Trick-or-Treating to Mrs. Özlem Altay Yücesoy’ s office and Frank Hall Library. We showed off our awesome Halloween costumes and sang‘‘ Trick-or-treat, Trick-or-treat give me something good to eat!’’ all the way back to our classroom.
As the Pre-Kindergarten class, we are learning on a project-based approach where we enjoy, observe, practice and give feedback on what we have seen and learned. There is an appropriate quote which describes exactly how we are learning in English class:
‘ Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.’— Benjamin Franklin
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