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!
