Halloween Happenings

I realize Halloween can be a bit of a controversial holiday, but I must say it does provide many excellent learning themes for the month. Over the past couple weeks, my pre-kindergarten class has learned about nocturnal animals (specifically bats and owls) and human bones. Here is a peek at some of the things that have happened at the end of October:

Spooky Loo Brew

I will have to say that most things on the blog this week are Pinterest inspired. I found this fun sensory table item while researching sensory table ideas. All you do is boil some spaghetti and mix it with a little olive oil and food coloring in a plastic bag. I actually used a bowl and plastic wrap since I did not have a bag avaiable at the time. It's been called witch's brew, but I changed the name to Spooky Loo Brew inspired by a fun song from the Wee Sing Halloween cd. This cd has some awesome dances and finger plays the children love to do. The Spooky Loo, 5 Little Pumpkins and Dem Bones are my favorite. The children also enjoyed doing freeze dance and listening to the cd during play and snack times. Anyway, the Spooky Loo Brew seemed to be a big hit. I dumped a lot of creepy crawly critters in the mix for the kids to count and sort. I found some fun Halloween themed cups at Wal Mart for less than a dollar which was fun too. Just a word to the wise - refrigerate between uses or throw away from the start. Don't ask me how I know.

Fun in the brew

The children really seemed to enjoy learning about nocturnal animals. We started out learning about bats. I worked quite a bit on rhyming words with the kids using bat themed activities from Kids Soup. Our classroom resembles a bat cave with their flying bats from KidsSoup hanging in the classroom.

Finally feeling like fall in here

We continued our study with owls. For a math themed learning center, I put together an owl with a next made from a paper bowl and tissue paper. I got together some Easter eggs with the letters we have learned. The children first had to match the upper and lower case letters on the egg. They rolled the dice then placed that many eggs in the nest. They loved it! We also enjoyed some cutting practice with a craft from KidsSoup.

Learning is a hoot!

I took advantage of our nocturnal animals to put a fun twist on the game SWAT.  I set up 2 teams - the bats vs the owls. I drew things that these creatures ate which matched up with the letters we learned so far - A for ant, N for nut, P for pumpkin, S for snake, F for fruit and M for mouse (B for bug was later added). When I would say the letter, they would race to be the first to swat it with the fly swatter.

We also learned about bones in the human body by taking a look at skeletons. I was really happy with the way our Q-tip skeletons turned out!

Dem Bones, Dem Bones,Dem Dry Bones

The split cracks me up

Adorable!

While learning about owls, I followed these instructions to make my own owl pellets out of newspaper. Because of this project, I had a lot of pieces of cut up skeleton. Using these pieces, the kids were able to play a fun math game. They rolled the dice and based on the number they rolled, they searched for the bone. Whoever completed their skeleton first was the winner.

The children have become great sorters this week with candy corn mix. I placed a 6 cup muffin tin out next to an assortment of candy corn treats. The children worked on separating them out. It took them a little bit to catch on, but they have been doing awesome. I plan on using the candy for patterning next.

An easy craft for them to do at the art table is ghost prints. The used their hand and some wiggly eyes to make their own ghost.

We used their thumb prints for these fun haunted houses. The idea and template for the house came from the Arts & Craft Mailbox magazine. The kids cut out the house, used their thumb prints for the ghost and practiced writing their name on the pumpkin which was glued on the house.

We ended Halloween with our Fall Fun Festival at school.  I was proud of my D-I-Y bee costume I found online. Just add yellow duct tape to a black shirt, pipe cleaner and pom pom to a head band, and tights to wing shaped wire hangers. This is what you have:

Not bad for a 4 yr old photographer

I was also in charge of the craft station this year. It ran smoothly for my first time. I was going to have the children cut out their own eyes and mouth for our paper plate ghosts, but I ended up cutting them out to save time and space. I just placed index cards with the directions at each step. The parents were able to see them and help their kids out. Having everything in it's own place made for easy set up and clean up. Not to mention it was a cute craft - thanks Pinterest, you're a lifesaver! 

Whew - Busy times and that felt like a lot, but there you have it. Some fun ideas for late October! 

Pumpkin Fun

Fall is hands down my favorite season. I love everything about fall, the smell, the colors, the fashion, the weather, etc, etc. Fall feels like holiday kick-off to me. One thing I spotted this year that let me know fall had arrived was the pumpkin. I pass about 3 pumpkin stands on my commute to work. These stands started popping up in September, so I began my itch for October. I love pumpkins, so pumpkin week is one of my favorite themes to teach in Pre-K. We had a lot of fun this year with it!
      The best thing we do it simply cutting open the pumpkin. I cut the top off beforehand, and the children reach in and pull out the "guts." They love it! A few were a bit shy about getting messy, but most of them asked for a second turn. When we came back inside, the kiddos made their own pumpkins. They got an orange double sided (folded) pumpkin with a stem. I used a stencil found online. I placed glue, pumpkin seeds and yellow yarn in front of them. The outside of their pumpkin read, "What's Inside?" This is based off a craft I found on Pinterest.

Final Products

The inside look

Close-Up

Much like the apple math center from No Time for Flashcards, I did a pumpkin seed count. The only variation I came up with was exchanging the tally mark cards for numbers. I recycled my magnetic numbers from the squirrel and nut count which worked great with the cookie sheets. The child chose a number card, attached it to the side, and placed the correct amount of pumpkin seeds on the pumpkin.

The center set up

Ready to go!

A fun idea I got from KidsSoup was pumpkin pie topping. My grandmother had given me tiny pie pans for cooking while I was student teaching. I never got to use them until now. All I did was cut out some brown circles, place them at the bottom and set out cotton balls. The children grabbed chip clips, clothespins, or tweezers and placed the topping (cotton balls) on the pie. This could easily be made into a counting activity as well. I chose to use it as a pre-writing activity for developing that pincer grasp.

Simple fun

Finally I found a pumpkin play dough recipe I really liked. The play dough smelled wonderful, and it was the perfect consistency for play. The recipe also explained how to dye noodles. I placed the green "stems," play dough, green pipe cleaner and a bag of fake flowers out on the table. I instructed the children to make a pumpkin patch after learning about the life cycle of a pumpkin. Knowing about vines, stems, yellow flowers and pumpkins, the children made a beautiful patch. I was really proud of their creations! The below is an example I put together for photo sake.

Of course to complete our study of pumpkins as well as apples from September, a field trip was in order. The children enjoyed picking their own apples from the orchard and taking home a pumpkin from the patch. The hay ride was a big hit too!. Fun times! I love October!

Apples Galore

A successful pumpkin picking

Hayride fun!

Fire Safety Week

I got really excited about Fire Safety week this year. This post is about a few learning centers I came up with for the week. For literacy I set up a letter review. I place a firefighter in the wooden firetruck from the play set. I also took 4 paper bags, cut doors in them and wrote the letters that we have studied on them. They represented the fire station. I placed letter cards and beginning sound pictures in the middle of the table, and the children were instructed to transport the letters to their proper station. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture.

For my math center, I cut out a dog's face from felt. I gave him eyes, nose and mouth. I then cut out several black circle like shapes. I placed large dice out on the table, and the children had to count the number of dots they rolled and apply that many spots to the dalmatian. Don't worry about the spots being in any particular shape, for they are after all - spots!

The last center I came up with for Fire Safety week was for the Sand & Water table. I have seen ideas online where people freeze objects in colored water. I took this idea and adapted it for my firefighter theme. I took hay bales, fences and similar objects from the play area that could potentially be set on fire. I froze them in orange, red and yellow dyed water. I placed the ice chunks in the table and set funnels, watering canes and cups with warm water in the table. The children poured the water over the ice releasing the objects. Though ice is the polar opposite of fire, it still served the purpose and the children had fun!

S is for Squirrel

I am a little behind in what's been going on in the classroom. So I must back up to last week. September was all about apples, and now October & November are about fall fun. I began our study of fall with squirrels. The letter S is next in the curriculum I use, so I thought squirrels would be a fun & fitting study.

I must admit I was a little discouraged about finding things for our furry friends, so this post may be a bit short. All week we worked on the "Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel" fingerplay. The kids loved swishing their bushing tails. We also learned that squirrels say hello with their noses. With this in mind and a few friendly suggestions from my director, I came up with this craft for the kiddos.

 The squirrel template came from a different school craft on KidsSoup. Instead of using it in a painting project, I traced the squirrels on gray paper. The children cut them out. They were instructed to pull apart cotton balls (for those fine motor building skills) and glue them to the tail. They also applied an eye and fuzzy nose. To keep the bushing tail matching, they squeezed glue onto the tail and my assistant and I helped them put glitter on the tail. They turned out really cute!

Here are 2 of our furry friends saying hello

This year at my school we are teaching the children the fruits of the spirit. October's theme in kindness, so I was able to come up with a math activity that led to kindness. Though we lack oak trees at the school, we have plenty of chestnut trees. At the beginning of the week, I took the children outside to collect lots of chestnuts. I had to pry them out of their prickly outer shell with a stick to prevent injury, but we still managed to come up with a lot. I had the KidsSoup squirrel and number activity printed out, and the kids enjoyed practicing number recognition and counting with the chestnuts.

At the end of the week I passed out the numbers. Together we named the numbers, and each child had a chance to count out their number of chestnuts. To practice kindness, each child took their chestnuts and placed them in Gatorade bottles for the Tot Time (1 yrs) class. Now their fun activity will be used as a sensory bottle for youngsters. They had lots of fun with this activity.

To end the week we played "Hide the Nut." One child would place the nut under their chair (nest) and I would instruct another child to steal it. I would then say, "Little Squirrel sitting on your nest, who took your nut, what is your guess?" The child would then guess until they got the right answer. It was good practice in following directions as many excited lips wanted to give away the answer.

  We had a fun squirrel week, but these were the highlights!