Happy Halloween!

Dramatic Play

We kept out the pumpkin patch from last week, but added pumpkin buckets and dress ups! The dress ups were a huge hit and I spent the whole hour helping kids change in and out of every costume. Then they'd "trick or treat" around the room for toys and things.

On Halloween, they came in their own costumes, so it was just the pumpkin patch without costumes.

Blocks

Alien counting puzzle


Sensory Table

We had record low temperatures this week, and since we don't go outside when it's below 20 degrees, I bought the table in! It was our fall mix from last week, with some added Halloween surprises!


Art

Beads and pipe cleaners


Halloween collages


Small Manipulatives

Spider lacing cards


Bug counting puzzles


Witch magnets




Writing

Halloween stamps


Halloween stickers

Snack

Mummy dogs (hot dogs they wrapped with strips of crescent dough)

Pumpkin oranges and banana ghosts for a healthy Halloween snack


Large Group

We sang 5 Little Pumpkins and learned the word "spooky." We talked about spooky things at Halloween just being pretend things, so they could remember something they're afraid of is not real.

Day 1, we read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat, and retold the story using character headbands.

Day 2, we read The Spookiest Halloween Ever, then did our Halloween centers
(thanks to my parent volunteers for running the centers!)

Center 1: My group read Spiders Spiders Everywhere, which is an awesome math book that covers counting to 10, and position words. Then we made our own counting spider books up to 5, and had to count as we stamped spiders in their books.

Center 2: The kids at the block center used all the blocks to build a gate for the 5 pumpkin buckets. Our dad helper also encouraged them to build the tallest towers that could hold a pumpkin on top-awesome large motor and problem solving skills!

Center 3: My husband played "potion master" and used test tubes to help the kids make baking soda and vinegar potions. They only had primary colors available and had to remember how to mix them to make secondary colors if they wanted them.

Center 4: Our parent helper read 5 Spooky Ghosts and had the kids count the ghosts on each page. Then they did a ghost shape worksheet, where they colored the shapes she told them to find, to help review shape names.

Small Group

We only did this on day 1, since on Halloween we had several small group rotations!

My group played a pumpkin counting game and did a pumpkin dot to dot to practice counting to 10.

The other group made pictures with Halloween stickers.



***Counting! Do you see a common theme of counting here, and during fall week? It's because it's an important skill we're working on now. Rote counting, which is just repeating the numbers in order, and mostly, one-to-one correspondence, which is counting objects or pictures. We are practicing using our fingers and touching each thing that we count, or using our fingers to move the objects we are counting, to keep track of what's already been counted. We are working on numbers 1-10. We are also working on matching those to their corresponding numbers, or the concept of numeracy. This is a lot for 3 year olds! But they can do it, and we'll be practicing lots and lots in many different ways, in every theme, so they are on their way to becoming amazing mathematicians!
Here's an excellent article on the subject: https://www.education.com/magazine/article/preschool-number-recognition-counting-easy/

Pumpkins

This week started out amazing with a field trip! Pack's Farm was perfect for our group. We had great warmish weather for October, so that was nice too! First, we got to have a lesson on pumpkins from Mr. Pack, or Old MacDonald as some in our class believed, which he liked :) He read us a book that perfectly explained the life cycle of a pumpkin, then told us all about how he plants his pumpkins. He had pumpkins and gourds of every variety for us to see and he told us about them. Then he carved a pumpkin to show the kids. He was so fast, and showed us how much easier it is to cut out the bottom than the top and deal with a lid! This was life-changing at our house and we carved that way this year and it worked wonderfully! Afterwards, we headed out to play. We did the hay maze a few times, then went off to the play area. They had big slides, a corn box, a pump game with rubber duckies and water, a tire playground, and big tunnels the kids could run in together. They had a great time! After they were done, we ate a quick snack, then each picked a pumpkin. It was a great way to start off our week learning about pumpkins, because it introduced how they're grown, plus they got to visit a real pumpkin patch before coming back to school and playing in one here.

Dramatic Play
Pumpkin Patch


Blocks
Another kid request. Some were disappointed I didn't have leaves to rake during apple orchard week, so they came out now. There were also blocks and puzzles on the shelves all week that were used each day, in addition to raking leaves.
 

Art
Pumpkin Slime-I just mixed pumpkin guts with the typical slime recipe, glue and water with borax, and we got ooey gooey pumpkin slime. They all tried it, but some didn't love the texture and watched from a distance. Others were so into it!


Because they didn't all appreciate the yuckiness, I also added some paper and fall foam stickers as an alternative at the art table.


We made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, then painted with orange paint. Minor frustration. I have gallons of paint from Wal-Mart, and others from Lakeshore, and my Lakeshore ones are coming apart! The orange gallon has turned yellow, so I tried shaking and shaking and it's this nasty dull yellowish red, not orange at all. I've barely had it a year, and it's so frustrating! Long story short, I'll never buy the more expensive Lakeshore paint again.

Beads. It had nothing to do with pumpkins, but my original plan was more paint, and we've been doing a lot of that and we needed a change of pace, so I got out beads and string!  


Small Manipulatives

Pumpkin do-a-dot pages and flat marbles and orange pom poms


Pumpkin lacing cards


Pumpkin shape matching

All of these are from tot-schooling.

Writing

Lots of pumpkin and Halloween stickers and stencils

 

Snack
We made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

Outside

Sensory table: kinetic sand with little pumpkins and acorns


Large Group
We learned the song 5 Little Pumpkins this week

Day 1, field trip

Day 2, we compared our pumpkins. We measured them and weighed them. Then we also reviewed our 5 senses by using them to learn about pumpkins.


Day 3, we made a gate for our 5 little pumpkins. It was challenging, because I wanted them all to work together, and that can be hard, but they did it! The only guidance I offered was it had to fit all 5 pumpkins. So when it was tall at first, I came to add the pumpkins, and it could only fit 1. So I asked them how to fit more, and they had to figure out to make it wider, instead of taller. And as 3 separate kids started their own gates, I would add a pumpkin and let them figure out it couldn't fit 5 without working with the other kids. It took awhile, but they eventually got it. They also liked adding random small blocks, and they saw as I placed the pumpkins, that those weren't very stable. I was proud of how they got it all worked out.


Day 4, We read Spookley the Square Pumpkin and then used play dough and they each got to make their own pumpkins. Like above, I gave very little guidance, I want them to figure it out. They got to choose their shape and figure out how to make it come to life.

Small Group

We did pumpkin seed counting.

We did a file folder game from tot-schooling putting pumpkins with letters in ABC order.

We did another worksheet for more cutting practice. They cut the pumpkins out and matched the faces. I really focused with them on holding scissors correctly, and I think we'll be doing a lot more of this to get them kinder ready.


Miss Kim played a matching counting game, and they did a number dot to dot.

Happy Halloween!

Dramatic Play
I kept up the apple orchard and pumpkin patch from learning about fall last week. We had just added the pumpkins, and on Thursday, I added more Halloween things like ghosts and bats in the sky, and black cats and jack-o-lanterns below.















Blocks

Day 1, I had out almost all of our dress ups. This was so much fun! We had pirates, knights, princesses, clowns, dragon, flamingo, polar bear, Elmo, witches, a pumpkin, and more! The witch was the favorite, because it glowed in the dark. They each had to take a turn to wear it, and I was leading groups in and out of the storage room most of the day.

Day 2, I made a spider web out of masking tape and filled it with spiders and insects. They loved playing with it, plus I showed them how to walk and balance on the web, so it was a great large motor game.


Art
 Day 1, Halloween stamps
 
Day 2, Frozen pumpkin-shaped paint. Frozen paint is so fun because it colors like chalk at first, then more like paint as it melts. It's a fun sensory and artistic activity.


Small Manips

Day 1, spider web lacing. They could make webs on the plates, plus sew spider rings onto it too.

Day 2, pumpkin seed counting in pumpkin trays

Magnet Board
Magnetic Build a Witch from the dollar store.


Writing Table
Halloween stickers. They loved adding these onto pictures they made at the art table too.


Sensory Table
We had a pumpkin cut in half, filled with creepy Halloween creatures.

Snack
Day 1, we had a healthy Halloween with banana ghosts, witch broomsticks, and orange pumpkins.


Day 2, they each made their own mummy dogs with hot dogs and crescent rolls.

 Large Group

Day 1, we read and acted out the book, There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Bat.
 We also learned the songs 5 Little Pumpkins and Spider on the Floor.

Day 2, was our Halloween party. We were in small groups and rotated through several fun activities like Pin the Tail on the Cat, Halloween Memory, Pumpkin counting, Don't Eat Frank, and making potions.

Small Group

My group read Spiders Spiders Everywhere and made spider counting books. You may notice some of their counting is off, but we worked on it and counted together and crossed out mistakes. So don't worry if work comes home with mistakes! We're always learning and mistakes are proof of that.

Miss Kim's group read about pumpkins and made the pumpkin life cycle.

Happy Halloween!

 I had so much fun dedicating a whole week of learning to Halloween! This is a holiday and theme that the kids are just obsessed with and love, so we couldn't not have fun!

Dramatic Play
How to make something Halloween-ish, but not scary at all? I thought about sticking to the spider web game from last year, but remembered my castle from last year's Fairy Tales unit!

So, I gave the castle some new paint (since we learned too late last year that the cheapest brand IS the cheapest), and added a small Halloween touch. Seriously, 2 signs and a welcome mat. Not scary at all, but still Halloween! I even added a few friendly ghosts and bats from the ceiling.
The castle was a hit, but mainly for what was inside....costumes! All kinds. Almost my whole collection. There were witches, clowns, pumpkins, dragons, knights, princesses, ballerinas, animals, cowboys/girls, safari people, and I think that may be it. Plus random wigs and hats. They had a blast!
 
They changed and changed over and over and become such fun characters. I loved seeing them dress up, head over to the writing or reading center awhile, then back for another costume change. They needed a way to hold swords and one kid suggested a belt, so I made him a yarn belt and pretty soon everyone had one. They used them to carry swords, stick horses, wands, and artwork. Very creative kids.

On actual Halloween, they were all coming in costume, so I had the spider web on the floor with bugs, plus the headbands and hats from There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat (we did it in large group last time), plus the blocks were in there too. They had fun playing again, but not as much fun as they did with the costumes, plus they were all drawn to playdough on day 2.
 

Art
Day 1 we made egg carton bats courtesy of this pin.
I knew it wouldn't take long and wasn't sure how much interest it would hold (all who wanted to try did it first, then moved on. When art isn't open-ended, it doesn't last), so I had a sensory activity to try too. Thanks to a mom's suggestion (and a rainy day so I couldn't put it in the sensory table outside), we did spaghetti and green jello with Halloween bugs and other toys. It was a huge hit. My girl stayed the whole 45 minutes (in costume, of course) and the others came and went, but it was always a busy area. They love slimy sensory experiences!
 
Day 2 we had orange play dough with Halloween and Fall cookie cutters.

Small Manips
We played with fall pattern cards (squirrel, leaves, apples)

Spider web lacing cards
 

Writing
We had Halloween stickers and foamie shapes

and Halloween stamps

Outside
We had 1 rainy day, which gave us extra large group time for pin the tail on the black cat and lots of songs.
 
On Halloween we had pumpkins in the sensory table and a few kids gathered some seeds, but none of them would touch it. It's my 5th year doing this, and the first year the kids wouldn't play in it!

Large Group
So fun. We sang 5 Little Pumpkins and Spider on the Floor from the Raffi cd (they asked to do them over and over, especially the spider one). We did a Halloween poem each day, and they all got to participate in playing a part as it built up.
Day 1, we read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat, and the kids wore headbands to help tell the story.
 
Day 2 we made these candy corn torn paper pictures off of pinterest, and it was awesome! I didn't expect them to do as well as they did, or to enjoy it and spend as much time on it as they did. I expected something quick that they didn't necessarily love, but they took their time on their art. Tearing paper is such a great fine motor skill, and it should be encouraged! Making art out of it is just a plus. We also squoze in a very quick game of Don't Eat Frank before we headed home.

Small Group
The volunteer moms helped teach the pumpkin life cycle by helping the kids create pumpkin "time lines."
My group played a phonics game, but we tied in Halloween because the cards were on pumpkins. I reviewed some letters and sounds with them and identified which pictures started with which sound. They then got a pile of cards with 3 different sounds, and had to sort them with the 3 letters. I was very very impressed with how well they did!

Snacks.
So fun. Again :) We made this cute mummy dogs from this pin, but ours were a little less cute. They made their own and loved doing it. They loved them and wished and begged for seconds!
 
On Halloween we had healthy snacks of pumpkins and ghosts from this pin.
 

My favorite moment of Halloween week is when a child asked me to play the cd with its book. I don't have a reading center with headphones, so when I have a book on cd, it just gets placed in front of the cd player if they want to listen to it. As soon as it started, they all came over. They probably went through it at least 4 times, but some listened more. It was fun to see them all huddled around the book in their costumes, intently listening!
 
This is a group of readers! I change the books out in the reading center each theme, and they flock to them. I get asked to read a story every day and I love it. Once I sit and start reading, they just flock over, and I usually have at least 7 of the 9, if not all of them, for at least 1 story. Then they all start pulling books and we just read and read until I realize clean up time has passed. It's awesome. I love reading to them, and love that they're hearing lots of these stories I can't fit into small and large group.