Oh My, Pumpkin Pie!

I am down to my last few days with my fabulous 2nd graders and only one subject to teach in a day.  I am left with teaching writing.

This week was different for writing than it has been the past few weeks.  They write awesome paragraphs when they have to write on something they have experienced so I decided they would start celebrating Thanksgiving kind of early.  I found a super easy pumpkin pie recipe that doesn't require any actual cooking.

Monday we read the story There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie and we just talked about the different types of desserts we eat during the holidays.

Tuesday was pie-making day!  I showed them all of the ingredients and explained what they were to do and they got to make it.






Here's how we made it:

Individual pie crusts
3 spoonfuls of vanilla pudding
1 spoonful of pumpkin mix



Just stir the pudding and pumpkin in a bowl and then pour into the pie crust. 

After they ate the pie I let each student come up and write their name on a t-chart to show whether they liked the pie or not.

Wednesday was spent making a circle map to come up with some describing words and coming with some sentence examples.  Since we're talking about pumpkin pie and I'm trying to make this process as exciting as possible I let them make the circle map on a paper plate which they decorated like a pumpkin.

Thursday we finally got to the four square.  I held off on the four square because I scheduled my last observation with my university supervisor for that day and I have spent so much time bragging about the four square that I really wanted her to see them create it.  We did one as a class and then they had to do one on their own.

On Friday they transferred the four square into a paragraph.  I found a pumpkin writing template and we added the pictures taken on Tuesday to the writing paper.

It was definitely the most successful writing experience I've had so far!  They had such a great time with the whole project.  For my last week I'm hoping they'll love it just as much because we will be reading The Cajun Gingerbread Boy and they'll get to decorate a cookie and I found foam ones so they can keep one too.  Hopefully after this they'll enjoy writing...