Halloween Fun

Thought you might enjoy seeing some of the fun Halloween and Fall themed activities we've been doing in our classroom.

 Our Meerkat friends brought us the ingredients to make Monster Teeth - yum!

 During Discovery, we visited Joe the Ginkgo tree.  He has turned yellow for the fall!

 We had a very interesting visitor make us some witch's brew.  The ingredient list included owl's eyes, monster scabs, and bat skeletons.  After getting a big scoop, we sorted and tallied the ingredients.  It was surprisingly delicious!

 Spooky Hands were made with our Reading Buddies.

We decided to return the treat to our Meerkat friends by making little lollipop ghosts.  We had so much fun giving them to our friends.  What a wonderful feeling!

Workshop Rundown: 10/22

Workshops this week were "Spooktacular"!

5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate.  The first one said, "Oh my, it's getting late!"  The second one said.... 

Do you remember this favorite childhood Halloween poem?  We made cute 5 Little Pumpkins gloves and then highlighted the HFW in the poem.  Good Halloween fun!

Stamping and writing a Halloween number book.  After stamping the page, the kids used our Halloween Word Wall to write what they stamped.  Such as "five jack-o-lanterns."  Be sure to have your child read this book to you at home!  Spooky voices are a must!

We sorted and labeled short and long I words.  Long I is for ice cream and short I is for inchworm.  Everyone surprised us with their  knowledge and understanding of the vowel sounds!

 After reading the new take home book "Who Has a Hat?" and making the new HFW cards - who, has, do, eight - the kids chose a spooky finger to find HFW in Halloween books.

 Of course we had to draw our October self-portraits in our costumes!

To practice number recognition and ordering, the kids cut out ghosts numbered 1-25.  Then, they put them in order.   After that, we had fun asking the kids to point to various numbers.  They are in a zip lock baggie for home practice.  Have your child order the numbers or use them as flashcards.  Number recognition from 1-25 is a kidergarten skill that can take some practice.

Harriet's Halloween Candy

A favorite Halloween book is Harriet's Halloween Candy.  Harriet has a good time trick-or-treating and comes back with a big bag of candy. 

She begins to sort her candy all different ways, including her favorites!  In class, we have fun working in pairs to sort a big bag of Halloween candy too.

 The pairs worked together to find different ways to sort the candy.

At first, it's easy - you can sort by color, type of candy, and size.  However, after awhile it can get a little tricky.  This is where you have to get really creative.  Kids were sorting by smell, clear and not clear packages, and hard and soft candy.

After sorting for awhile, I gave them a  new challenge - to divide the candy between them equally.  It was fun to see how they approached the activity.  Some kids began to pass them out one by one while others just took a bunch and counted them.  Finally, they all arrived at equal amounts.

Unless, of course, there was a problem - one extra piece of candy.  What do you do with the extra piece?  Everyone brainstormed ideas such as splitting it in two, giving it to someone who doesn't have candy, or just throwing it away! 

What would you do with an extra piece of candy? 

Ghostly Guts

 Great big globs of greasy, grimy ghostly guts;

 Cobwebs hanging over us;

 Pumpkins out on every street.

 Kids in costume calling out for trick-or-treat.

 I think it's Halloween!

Make ghostly guts at home by mixing a glob of glue with a glob of liquid starch.  OOOHHHHH....guts!

Workshop Rundown: 10/15

We took a virtual trip around the world to see animals in all seven continents.  The kids used iPads this week to scan QR codes that then took them to a continent.  I was so excited to hear the kids say "I just visited Europe." and "Africa is cool!"  (click on the continent names to the left so you can see too!)

 I also heard reports of QR codes being discovered at home on packages and magazines - what a different world our kids live in!

 It's beginning to get a little spooky in here! We made Haunted Houses filled with H pictures.  Then, we decorated the houses with oil pastels.  The completed houses are hanging on our classroom wall.

 Everyone had fun "playing school" with the bug pointers.  The kids read the world wall, sang the continent song, counted, and reviewed money.

 To practice the HFW "this" we wrote a friendship book.  Everyone drew a friend's face out of a bag and then wrote a sentence such as, "This is Anna."

 New HFW this week are:  up, down, go, seven.  The new book is "We Go."

To wrap up our animal unit, we are making stuffies of our favorite animals.  During workshop, they drew and colored their animals on fabric.  Tomorrow, we will sew them during our Project Time.

Marshmallow Sculptures

In math, we explored the concept of 3-D by building sculptures out of marshmallows and toothpicks. The trick is to get your sculpture off of the table in into the air. We learned all about stabilizing and balancing.   We may have some future architects or engineers in the class!

Since they are a bit messy and fragile, I told the kids I'd share pictures of their sculptures with you instead of trying to take them home.

Who says you can play with your food?!