Halloween

These are just a few of the ideas we used for Halloween. 

We read a Dora book, The Halloween Cat, and discussed the parts of the story. This was our first attempt and sequencing and recalling events from a story this year. The students did a great job because Dora books are pretty repetitive. I'm sure you can use any Halloween story for this activity. I asked students to remember something that happened at the beginning, the middle, and at the end of the story and wrote down their responses. The book was handy to look at pictures in case I had any blank stares. They did really well with this!

 

 We read Stellaluna and discussed some things that we learned about bats from the story. I wrote down one bat fact that they told me. They drew the eyes and mouth and we hung them upside down in our classroom.

 We did a pattern activity with haunted houses and Halloween stickers. Students were able to choose 2 Halloween items for their patterns. The teachers wrote down what they chose in the rhyme. We only focused on AB patterns.

 

We read There's a Nightmare in my Closet. We talked about how the monster wasn't really scary. In fact, the monster was scared of the kid! We listened to Maybe the Monster by Justin Roberts. What a fun song! After that, we made our own nightmares and put them in our closets. The students loved being able to create silly monsters. There were no rules! They could have 2 heads, 4 eyes, 8 legs... whatever they wanted! We got some really great pictures out of it and I know they enjoyed it!

Fall

 The leaves are changing and we're enjoying every minute of it! Here are some fun things we did to learn about Fall! We did 2 different investigations! First we examined an apple, inside and out, and described everything we saw and tasted! Then we did the same with a pumpkin. The pumpkin was much messier and I had to count the seeds on my own since there were over 500! (I would have easily lost their attention after awhile.) All in all, both investigations were a lot of fun and we were able to use great describing words, learn about how pumpkins and apples grow, and get a little messy too! 

 We took a trip to the pumpkin patch! It's always a lot of fun learning about the pumpkins and seeing some cool animals too! The giraffes are my favorite!

 We did out first measuring activity and compared how big we were against apples and pumpkins. It is neat to see the other classrooms and even teachers and parents measuring themselves as well! They realized quickly that they were more apples tall than pumpkins tall!

 We made a list of everything in Fall that could be red, orange, or yellow. Then they chose something from each list and drew their own pictures. It was fun coming up with the lists!

 We measured the pumpkin we got from the pumpkin patch with unifix cubes. First we took guesses on how tall it was and then we used the cubes to measure it. We had some close guesses!

We went on a nature walk outside and collected leaves in ziploc bags. The students used the leaves for sorting activities, and art projects. They loved taking the leaves home although I'm sure their parents weren't as thrilled! ;)

Back to School

It's back to school time! Here's some things we did in Preschool this year! We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and decorated trees with how many letters that were in our names. I also printed out a tree, taped it to a cookie sheet, and added it to our ABC center to use with the magnetic letters. The students loved acting out the story with the letters!

 We read the Kissing Hand and discussed how we felt on the first day of school. Some students were excited while others were scared. We talked about how our Moms and Dads love us even when we're at school!

 This is just a Back to School display outside the door! Love my good apples!

 We did an All About Me Glyph! Students decorated people according to the code. We learned about each other and made some nice looking students!

 We made emotion masks! Students took home a mask to be happy, sad, angry, and silly. They loved playing with these! We discussed how it is okay to feel angry or sad but it's not okay to hurt others or throw tantrums. Students learn to deal with these emotions in our class by using the calm caddy and talking to the teacher. Another activity we did to learn about emotions was playing with self-control bubbles. I blew bubbles and allowed the students to pop them as they pleased. Then I explained that this time I blow the bubbles, we have to try as hard as we can not to touch them. I blew as many bubbles as it took for all the students to sit still. We talked about how it was really hard but when we did it, we were really proud of ourselves. This is also something I will do from time to time when I feel students are needing a refresher.

 This was a fun lesson on how to sit during circle time. We labeled the nice sitting child and tried to sit just like him. He's been sitting with us for over a month and I still refer back to him as the best sitter on the carpet!

 We read Pete-the-Cat, or sang it rather, and made our own cats! They colored the shoes whatever color they liked!

This was a cute art craftivity I saw on Pinterest. Meet Roy G. Biv!