October 30, 2008
Today during group time we used team work and our knowledge of shapes to plan our class Jack-O-Lantern. To create each piece of the Jack-O-Lantern we chose from different shapes such as a square, rhombus, triangle, trapezoid, and circle. The children used personal choice, knowledge of shapes, and ability to follow directions to vote for their preferred shape. The children formed a line behind their preferred shape which represented a human graph. The shape with the longest line was chosen for each piece. The children first had to decide on what shape our eyes on our Jack-O-Lantern would be. The children voted and the triangle shape was chosen with the most class votes. The children then choose the shape for the mouth. During this vote the children were dispersed among most of the shapes. We had a tie between two of the shapes; the circle and trapezoid. As a group we came up with a solution to our tie and we decided to revote. After voting again the circle was chosen for the mouth of our Jack-O-Lantern. The children then voted for the shape of the nose. They voted and a rhombus won our vote and became the nose on our Jack-O-Lantern. The children had a great time creating our Jack-O-Lantern, working together and each being a part of our class decoration. To display our team work we lit our Jack-O-Lantern during read and relax and watched it shimmer in the darkness. Throughout the activity we used vocabulary describing more or less, worked cooperatively to compromise and used our creativity to create our Jack-O-Lantern. We also strengthened our shape knowledge by using various shape vocabulary. The children truly enjoyed this activity. They were able to work together and create a product that was displayed in the classroom.
