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!