Tons of Halloween Center Activities!

We are going to be having so much fun the next two weeks! We are hitting our standards hard, BUT in totally playful ways that my students love! Recently Oriental Trading invited me to try out some of their products in my classroom in return for an honest review. Here's what I picked:

Oh my gosh! These little stamps are so cute AND they're perfect for making patterns. As long as you press firmly, they show up great! My little Kats had a great time with them - and although I started off just asking them to make an AB pattern, several of them soon branched out and created AABB, ABB and even ABC patterns on their own! Each pack of Halloween Stampers contains 24 stamps which means even if a cap or two gets left off (it always happens!) you'll have plenty left for centers!

I love, love, love these Shape Spiders! First, they're super easy to put together and come with extra pieces just in case some gets overzealous when peeling off the backing of the stickers. They're made of foam and have a good size magnet - I used hot glue to make sure the magnet stayed put! This is one of my white boards in class and I am the proud artist of the web - I'm actually shocked that it turned out so well since I usually can't draw at all lol! First we used our spiders for shape recognition, and then we used them to practice our positional words! For example, my Kats would have to tell me where the Rectangle Spider is on the web, in relation to another spider, so "The Rectangle Spider is UNDER the Triangle Spider!" They come 12 to a pack, so just 2 packs and I had enough for my whole class to have one to take home to practice positional words with their families!

I also got these Spooky Finger Eye Rings, which of course we're going to be using to find letters in our big books! These are sure to make our Big Book Center a popular center - I love fun things like that can motivate kids so easily! These come with a dozen in a bag, so it's perfect for small groups or center activities!

These Candy Corn Weaving Mats may present a bit of a challenge to my kiddos, but luckily they come with 24 in a pack, so they should last until Halloween. This is a great fine motor exercise, and the paper is sturdy enough that my 2 year old could manipulate it without ripping it!

 

I am so looking forward to our lesson involving these Peanuts Halloween Gliders! They're very simple to put together, although since my kiddos are 4, I'll be doing it in small group to help out with anyone who gets frustrated. Then we'll hit the cafeteria (after lunch time when the tables are cleared away) and do a measurement lesson. We'll see who can fly their plane the furthest, plus we'll use some giant "monster feet" (I'll be cutting those out of construction paper) to do some nonstandard measuring of the distances!

Our Spider Web Ceiling Decoration was a big hit too! All day long I would hear excited gasps and whispers as other classes passed our door lol! As soon as my kiddos saw it they knew we would be studying spiders this week, and the conversations began immediately. This is big for us, since we're really working on our vocabularies. Anything that can get my kids excited and talking is awesome to me!

Can you tell I'm really hitting patterns hard? In a recent PD on math, one of our specialists mentioned that often times when she has someone who is having trouble in middle school, she brings them way back down to the very beginning with number sense and starts seeing where their gaps are. She stated that most of the time, it turns out that they have trouble seeing and producing patterns, which eventually leads them to lots of trouble in Algebra. These Smiley Face Monster Stickers and Jack O'Lantern Face Stickers are highly motivating, so my kiddos think this is just a fun activity rather than the important math practice it really is!

My absolute favorite part is my Sensory Table though. I colored rice to create our candy corn, then added black beans and dried corn! The various toys are also from OT - like the Halloween Rubber Ducks which come 24 to a package in 4 different colors - perfect for sorting and patterning too! I added some rings and snakes, plus I have some cupcake liners printed with spider webs, and plastic Halloween cups. We'll be cooking up lots of spooky treats! To top the whole thing off, I sprinkled a little bit of pumpkin pie spice into the various layers, to make it a multi-sensory experience!

There you have it - lots of ways to incorporate motivation and fun into your centers via Oriental Trading! Most of the items will last more than one year too, so if you pack them up carefully, you'll be able to use them repeatedly! 

Pumpkin Character Book Reports

Whew! There is apparently no germ like a Pre-K germ! After several years of never getting sick, I was taken out by a stomach bug this week! My assistant also missed several days due to a respiratory virus. Between one or the other of us being absent, we had a crazy week! Thus the reason I have not posted our fabulous Pumpkin Character Book Reports! So, without further ado, here they are:

Each student who completed their Pumpkin Character Book Report received this Brag Tag:

I think Brag Tags are still the most inexpensive and cutest incentives around - my students love them!

We made sweet little Ghost Bananas on Halloween too - bananas dipped in vanilla yogurt with chocolate chip eyes:

I labeled my wax paper with the student names so that they were sure to have the same banana they prepared. Here's my little tip for next year - freeze the bananas on the sticks before you dip them. I didn't, and we had many a banana escape into the yogurt and need to be fished out! The kids loved them and I loved that it was an easy, inexpensive and healthy treat! It was a great activity since we couldn't have a Halloween party ;p

Well that catches me up, I'll be back tomorrow with a Veteran's Day freebie and some November news!

Sunday Summary: What We've Been Up To

Wow the time has been flying! October is almost gone which means its time for Red Ribbon Week and Halloween! Here's a look at what we're doing:

We've been getting a lot of mileage out of our Halloween themed erasers! I bought more this year, and along with my pumpkin ice cube trays (which are perfect ten frames!) we have been having fun counting to 10, sorting and patterning!

  

 Here's an ABC pattern  - most of my kiddos have caught on to patterning very easily this year!

Some of my kiddos are going on to higher order math skills "If we have 4  cats, how many bats will we need to fill up our tray to 10?"

 

Some are still working on one to one correspondence so the erasers are fun counting practice for them!

I needed a Halloween craft idea for our bulletin board, but the K class down the hall did torn paper pumpkins and put them on display before we could! I love torn paper art projects because they're such good fine motor practice, not to mention easy on prep! I thought on my feet however and turned our pumpkins into a shape/positional word activity! We painted our pumpkins with these texture brushes:

Then the kiddos cut them out and glued on the shapes to make their jack o'lantern faces. We created the face template on our Smartboard first - discusing which shapes to use for which facial feature and where it would be placed in relation to the other shapes. 

Next time I'll make our arms and legs shorter, but I think they turned out super cute for a last minute change!

Our Red Ribbon Week doors are starting to pop up along the hallways. Unfortunately we have run out of most of our butcher paper, there's no more black or blue so our dedicated teachers have had to get creative!

This one is from our Special Ed. Coordinators door - she painted the pink paper black and then added her galaxy. Her students created the stars that form the border and each had a reason for being drug free on it.

We have plenty of yellow paper left, so our Title I tutors made this door with a bunch of drug-free rhyming quotes. I have a feeling they will inspire some great doors next year:

I love this door from our Title I Coordinator and Counselor! Those owls are precious and might be a future craft in my room!

My door is not finished yet - that's our Monday craftivity! I'm still torn between two ideas so you'll have to wait and see which one I go with!

Our Sand & Water table has corn in it now:

I bought a huge sack of corn at our local feed store. The kids have gotten very good at sweeping up any spills, so we aren't bringing down any custodial wrath :)

However, even though this looks cool, and the kids were ultra proud of themselves, it is NOT a good idea to stack the full buckets on top of each other:

Two seconds and one excited jump after this picture was taken and those buckets tumbled, spilling corn everywhere!  

That's all for now - off to work on those Red Ribbon Week door ideas and make sure I have something red to wear for tomorrow!

Monster Spray, Veterans Day & a Freebie Hop!

Did you survive Halloween? My kiddos were actually pretty good both Thursday and Friday...or maybe I am just getting used to the craziness?! Sullivan spent most of the night exploring his hands - he is just learning how to get them in his mouth!

We had so much fun last week with Debbie Clement's Monster Spray song! Oh my goodness, I told my kiddos to close their eyes and imagine their monster as we listened to the song and I took the most precious video. I really wish I could share it because my kiddos were moving and dancing in their seats, spraying the monsters and at the end a chorus of voices called out "I got my monster!" "I know what mine looks like!" It was awesome! We made a class book and here are a few of their pages:

This week we are going to be learning Debbie's "Red, White and Blue" song for Veterans Day. I absolutely love the book that goes with the song! Such gorgeous illustrations and the song is super catchy. My kiddos always love learning the sign language too!


Before we hop into learning about Thanksgiving and all things turkey, we're having a week of Veterans Day fun! That includes a Veterans Day Roll & Graph as well as Roll & Cover games:

I'm also cutting and laminating my military ten frames from my Fall Holidays Ten Frames pack:

My student teacher is taking over more this week (poor thing, I'm having a hard time letting go and I know she's at that "Get out of here and let me try it on my own!" stage!) Wish us both luck - me in the letting go and her in taking over 100%!


If you're in the mood for some freebies (who isn't?!) then head over to my Facebook Page to see our Fall Freebie FB Hop! Tons of goodies for this time of year! Just click the picture below to go see it!

Red Ribbon Week, Character Pumpkins and Batty Equations!

Hi friends! Just a quick post to share some pictures with you! We're having Red Ribbon Week this week and we made the cutest door display:

 It is sooo cute! I adapted the template found here.

I love how they all came out so differently!

 I had no idea Yoda was in my class!

We did my Batty Equations Activity and my kiddos LOVED it! For some reason they all started picking sides, either wanting True to win or False to win (have the most). So glad it was a tie lol!

 I have come to understand that this group of kids loves to color! I mean, they will take 20 minutes coloring in borders and pictures before they even get to the meat of the work! We are working on getting the math done first and then coloring!

I sent home a Character Pumpkin homework assignment from Simply Kinder and got the cutest pumpkins back. Here are some of them:

 

 

I am a little bit afraid about going into school on Halloween tomorrow - hoping no one got into the candy early! I hope you all have a great day!