Happy Halloween!

October has gone by so fast.  Has it been the busiest October ever for you too?  Wow!  And now it's almost over.   Ok, this little set of cards isn't related to Halloween, but I am so happy with how they came out.  They were a rush job last week to get them ready for Monday's math lesson.

I started the week using these Number Tower Cards for a math game with my kiddos.  We are working on the concepts of number order, and more. less, equal with numbers 0-10.    The kids played a game as partners where they had to order the cards first and then take turns closing eyes while the other student removed two cards.  The student with closed eyes then had to guess which two numbers were missing.  They really had fun with it.  Both parts of the activity were fantastic!  I love these cards because the visual representation of the numbers "growing" really helps students conceptualize how numbers work.  You can grab these cards for your class by clicking on the link or image above.



We have also been doing some pumpkin studies in class and my kiddos made these sweet pumpkin  life cycle projects.  We only had a small bulletin board space for them, so they are packed in.  It looks like a little pumpkin patch.  They made these as an independent center activity over four days. 

Here are the four stages up close:

I just love kindergarten art work!  They did a great job with this craftivity!  It was super easy!  I just cut white 12 x 18 paper in half hot dog style.  Then I folded each into four equal sections.  We started with the papers folded shut with student's name on the first section that they needed to use.  Each day, I unfolded the paper to show the following section where the kids would do the  next stage.  Nobody got mixed up! It worked great!



These haunted, or spooky, shape houses were another project my kiddos did in October.  They are up in our classroom to help decorate for Halloween.  They are a part of my new project based homework this year.  Let me know what you think!  I have gotten some nice feedback from parents.  I would love to know what some other teachers think too.

The kiddos had to draw out the design to support creative thinking.

They also had to use a recording sheet to count how many of each shape was used in the final design as well as how many shapes were used altogether.

These are not available in a product yet.  I am creating it and piloting it this year as we go along.  If you love it, let me know and I will try to share my Project Based Homework as a product for next school year.

I had fun decorating the classroom this year for Halloween.  I use these cute hanging thinga majigs and a big Happy Halloween sign on the line across my classroom.  The ghost at the top of the blog post is another decoration in this set.  They are too cute to be scary, so they are perfect for kindergarten kids.  I have had these for years!  I am pretty sure they were Hallmark decorations and it was money well spent.  They were built to last.  I also put up all the haunted houses the kiddos made and it was perfect!




This is the treat I gave to my sweet students this year.

Silly scarecrow stuffies!  Yay!  I wanted something that wasn't food.  I wanted something that I didn't need to wrap or spend much time on.  And... the kiddos had so much fun acting out The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything By Linda D. Williams and Megan Lloyd, that I thought these little scarecrows were perfect!  I hope they have fun with them.  Thanks, Oriental Trading Co.  It was a money vs. time decision.  Time always wins out for me, so it was money well spent.

This is that book I mentioned above.  I read it every Halloween.

These are some others I really love for pumpkins and Halloween time:

 

A story about the little bat with a big idea who helped the witch just in time for her Halloween party. 

 

This is an adorable tale about three friends who realize their friendship is more important than how they make the pumpkin soup each day.   I used this story to introduce the concept of characters to my kiddos. 

This story is about a young boy who loves his jack-o-lantern and how a pumpkin plant sprouts back from what was left of it in the garden.  Great story that incorporates the fun of Halloween with the elements of growing pumpkin plants.  It is a must have if you are doing a pumpkin unit.

 

This is my absolute favorite book for a pumpkin unit!  The photos are gorgeous and it is truly written as poetry.  It gives students the opportunity to ask and answer questions as well as infer meaning because of the rich vocabulary and use of literary devices.  You will LOVE this quality piece of children's nonfiction.  Perfect for pumpkin life cycle studies!

I hope you had a super fun day with your kiddos in class for Halloween!  My day went really well.  I am glad because it was a big week.  We had the full moon, a field trip, and Halloween all in one week... Yikes!  But this great little class really stepped it up.  They did a fantastic job on our field trip and a good job on our Halloween day too.  I am so proud of them!

If you are looking for a great resource to help your October and especially Halloween week, go smoothly, you should really check out my Print and Go! Halloween pack.  It has a variety of interactive NO PREP math and literacy pages that are perfect for October in kindergarten.  You can look at it by clicking on the link above or the image below.

Happy Halloween!
Happy teaching!

Halloween Fun!

Halloween is almost here!  That means fall is really here, which makes me happy because I love fall so much!  I have been very busy and so unfortunately the blogging has not been happening as regularly as I would like.  But, today I have a freebie for you and some fun ideas for Halloween and fall in your classroom.

My friend who teaches first grade is doing monthly calendars with her students just like I do with mine.  So she is using the ones I make.  Thanks Carey!  We didn't talk about the art projects we had decided to do for October and guess what we BOTH did?  Yup, silly pumpkins!!!  Great minds think alike.  Hers are above.  They did the whole thing as cut paper art.  And of course because the students are firsties, they did all the designing and cutting completely independently.

My students started the project by painting a pumpkin independently.  I cut out the painted pumpkins.  Then, the next day, I helped them with the face parts.  I showed them lots of examples from this project by doing a Google search on my iPad for silly pumpkins.  When they sat down at my center table to do the project, they told me what shape they wanted for eyes, mouth, teeth, etc.  I drew the shapes for them and they did the cutting independently.  These always come out super cute!  You can see more from the last time I did this project here: It's Pumpkin time!   If you want to get the calendars that we have used, you can grab them right here: Calendars for Number Writing. 

I just had to show you this green one because it is so darn cute!  I was so proud of the little darling who made it too, because the cutting was a bit tricky for her.  Yay for silly pumpkins! Woo hoo!

These are some fun activities that I send home for homework in October.  We just completed our Counting Bears number books, so my students are learning the number words from 1-10.  This page is a fun way to practice that knowledge along with counting practice.  I love activities that cover both math and literacy. 

We also have been working on hidden partners from ENY math.  For those of you who don't know, hidden partners are the smaller numbers that "hide" inside big ones.  For example, 6 can have 3 and 3 or it can have 4 and 2 inside.  You get the idea...  My kids are really starting to understand this concept and many already know a lot about adding numbers together.  So, this sheet is another fun way to practice all those skills.

This monster number activity is also very fun and great practice for numbers.  They have to sort tallys, dice, and words by number to match the monster with the correct numeral.   These sheets are so handy to have around during October.  I got sick for the first time this month and you never know when you are going to need something quick for sub plans.  They are also great for homework or morning work which is what I made them for.  If you want to check out the whole pack, you can find them here: Print and Go! Halloween



This is a cute scarecrow glyph activity that I put together quickly last year and it was super fun!

The kiddos had to use purple bands on the hats if they were girls and yellow if they were boys.  They used big googly eyes if they were 6 years old and small ones if they were 5.  Lastly, they used a red nose if they love fruit more and green if they love veggies more.  We didn't do a data recording sheet for this activity, but it is so fun to see the kids looking at the bulletin board and talking to their friends about the results.

This year we have been focusing a lot on counting and numbers, so I made this little open ended activity to see how my students were coming along with that.  We were also working on drawing very detailed pictures in writers' workshop, so it was a perfect combination of what we had been doing in class.  It was a big success and I loved that the kids got to choose how many of each item they were drawing and then counting.  Don't you just LOVE drawings by five year old people?  I DO!!!

Ok, you are probably here for the freebie and if you actually read the post and looked at my ideas, I thank you and hope you found something helpful!  This is a fun counting activity I made for the kiddos to do on Halloween.  We use candy corn and the kids love that they get to eat some.

If you want to grab these counting mats for your classroom, you can go get them in my TpT store right here: FREEBIE - Halloween counting mats.  Or, you can click on the cover image below.

I hope your October is going well.  Thanks so much for stopping by.
Happy teaching!
Happy Halloween!