Halloween

We've spend a few weeks learning about Autumn or Fall and all the things that occur during this season. This week we've added in Halloween activities, to keep in the 'spirit' of things. 

Making flannel board jack-o-lanterns.

Pumpkin size sorting.

This was a fun and tasty game. You place a candycorn on each number (1-12), roll the dice and match the number. Then eat the candycorn that was on the rolled number. B loved this game, mostly because he got to eat candy. ;)

B had a lot of fun with this too. It's simply using a hammer and some nails to make holes in a pumpkin. I was going to give him dots to aim for, but instead just let him nail where he wanted. I was hoping that the holes would be big enough to let light out, but they weren't. I've heard you can use a drill to do this too.  We may try that another year.  

We played with playdoh and halloween cookie cutters. He also had a little help making a fall tree.

Our skeleton friend...so he's really hard to see, but isn't he cute! This project turned out to be more work for mommy than B. It's definately an older child's activity. However, while I was cutting everything out, B was asking all kinds of questions about bones and where all of those were on his body. Patterns for this cute guy can be found here.

We played 'hide and seek' for Little Ghost, while enphasising colors.

Little Ghost, Little Ghost

Where are you at?

Little Ghost, Little Ghost

What color is your house?

(knock on door) Little Ghost are you in the (red) house?

Then move the house to see who's hiding underneath. We hide other Halloween items, like a bat, jackolantern, & pumpkin under the other houses, so there was always some kind of surprise.

Part of our family tradition is to make fall peanut butter shaped cookies.

and pumpkin shaped pizza.

B loves helping in the kitchen, especially when they're special treats.

Another fun activity we tried was putting glow sticks/rings from the dollar store, in at bath time and we let the fun begin.

Some fun Halloween books to enjoy, sorry some of the images are blurry...

Happy Halloween!

Carving Pumpkins

 B has been asking to carve our pumpkins for over a week since we went to the pumpkin patch to pick them out, but we had to wait for Daddy to come home from a business trip. So this evening we spent carving our pumpkins... love making holiday traditions with this little guy!

Scooping

B did not like cleaning the pumpkins out. 'It's yucky!'

So while Daddy worked on the bigger pumpkins, B got to decorate his own small one with felt stickers. He made an owl and was very proud of his little pumpkin.

Our finished Jack-o-lantern...B said he needed a square nose, ears & eyebrows.

This was another attempt at a free hand design, that ended badly. Especially since the carving knife broke midway through. :(   So we gave B some paint and let him finish it off. Maybe it's just a mom's vision, but I can make out a witch on a spooky Halloween night.

 Happy Halloween from our family!

Spider paintings

This is a quick an easy craft for Halloween or a lesson on spiders. I tied it into Halloween, but we may revisit this when we really learn about spiders.

We used black construction paper (we cut it to fit in an take away tin/lid from the dollar store),

a marble, white paint, pom-pom, chenile stick, glue & google eyes.

First we taped the back of the paper into the pan,

 added a few drops of white paint and a marble, then rolled it back and forth.

Then our paper looked like a spider web.

We let it dry and put together the other items to make a spider on the web....

I bet he's the cutest spider you've ever seen!

We did another quick spider related project using our Halloween spider rings.

I tied twine to two spider rings, then B wore the rings. He was really working hard on his hand eye coordination for this project, by dipping the twine in the paint & then dragging it across the page.

As you can see from the lack of paint, B was not very interested in this project.

Here are a few other fun spider crafts ... 2teachingmommies

Enjoy!

I'm a little pumpkin, Orange and round....

       This week we focused on pumpkins for our fall unit, plus part of the week we did a few fun Halloween activities (those will be posted soon).

This is our five little pumpkins manipulative...mini erasers and tongue depressors.

In case you don't know the five little pumpkins:

                                                                    Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one said, "Oh, my it's getting late!"
The second one said, "We don't care!"
The third one said, "There are bats all in the air!"
The fourth one said, "I'm ready for some fun!"
The fifth one said, "Let's run and run and run!"
Then Whoooooosh... went the wind,
And out went the light!
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

We recreated our 5 little pumpkins poem with stickers, construction paper and Popsicle sticks.

Learning the growth cycle of a pumpkin, with nomenclature cards. These are a little harder than simply matching a picture. First you match the picture, then you match the words. Since B isn't reading, he mostly match based on the first letter. He was not into this activity either, he was much more excited about the next box & what was in it.

Matching shapes on pumpkins. Find the patterns here.

Counting pumpkin seeds: we started at 10 and subtracted a few at a time (put a lesser number card where 8 is), this way once he made the seeds & card match, he got to eat the ones we took away. He was VERY excited about that.  

Matching fall themed cards; these are great, colorful photos that we'll be using through Thanksgiving. Matching Cards here

We made marbled pumpkins for our art project this week. We started with a template of six small pumpkins and a few drops of fall colored paint. Add a marble, roll, and...

you get this, which turned into ...

our cut out pumpkins.

B's pumpkins & leaves (from fall unit) were so cute; I decided we needed some fall decorations in our classroom. So during nap time, I punched holes in them and treaded twine through them. B was so excited when he saw his art hanging in the 'school'. He asked if Daddy's office had any, but we didn't make enough. ;(  Next year we will definitely make enough to decorate the whole house. They're so simple and sweet, and who doesn't like to save money when decorating for the holidays.

Okay, so these are bats, not pumpkins but the tray was pumpkins. B sorted the correct number of bats into the same numbered pumpkin. We are working on understanding that each number actually represents an amount.

Pumpkin books of the week:

The Pumpkin Patch Parable

is a sweet book teaches about how God made them new, full of light to shine in a dark world.

Leaves are falling...

Leaves are falling, softly falling, floating to the ground;

Red & orange, brown & yellow, floating to the ground...

Fall is here and we are learning about what this season means, from cooler weather, shorter days, harvest time, to leaves changing & falling.

Our fall sensory bin...

(what's in it: leaves, apples, mini gourds & pumpkins, spider rings...all from the dollar store; sticks & acorns from our nature walk & a rake, insect viewer, magnifying glass, & twizzers)

 

He has fun digging, raking & find all the hidden treasures in it.

especially the spiders!

Even the kitty was very interested in the spiders.

Our flannel board with story.

Counting the leaves on the tree.

Leave patterns. Find patterns here.

We made a falling leaves project this week. I printed a template of leaves & B painted them with fall colors.

I wish I would have cut them out first, because once there was paint all over the page I couldn't see the outlines. So I just cut leave patterns myself.

I love how the colors mixed together & he had textured brushes, so the leaves looked like real fall leaves.

I cut out a swirl, and we glued the leaves to it...now we have falling leaves in our classroom.

We also took a nature walk, where we collected acorns & twigs for our sensory bin.

The real fall ground.

A few books we've been reading...