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/
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