Halloween Activities for Toddlers

Today I'm sharing some of the Halloween activities I did this season with my two year olds. Most of these ideas involve sensory play and arts/crafts. Admittedly, Halloween isn't my favorite holiday, BUT we enjoyed lots of Halloween themed activities leading up to Halloween. 

We do a LOT of sensory play activities. One of my girls loves sensory play, while one is a little more hesitant. It is so important to me to expose them to sensory play for sensory development. 

Activity #1: 

Our first activity was a sensory bin that involved shaving cream and several Halloween themed goodies: skeletons, eyeballs, and spiders. The spiders and skeletons were purchased in a pack at Wal-Mart for around $1. I purchased the eyeballs years ago (for a different activity) from Dollar Tree. I placed all of the spooky figures into the shaving cream and had my girls pick them out and play in the shaving cream. We may have had a moment of one falling INTO the bin and getting shaving cream everywhere, but hey - it was an easy clean up! 

Activity #2: 

I created another spooky sensory bin using black webbing, mini pumpkins, (both purchased from Dollar Tree), and spiders. This bin was met with a little more hesitation, but they ended up enjoying it. The spiders got hooked in the webbing, so we used some fine motor skills to "rescue" them. 

Activity #3: 

After "rescuing" the spiders, we organized them by color! Easy, quick, and reinforces colors! Both of my girls call any and all spiders "Itsy" so we organized all of the Itsy's! 

Activity #4: 

If you can't tell already, I'm all about reusing materials I have on hand to get the most bang for my buck. We created this Witch's Brew for some spooky water play using the same materials listed above. 

Activity #5: 

It wouldn't be Halloween without carving or painting pumpkins! I knew that carving pumpkins would be too much for my sensory hesitant girl (and honestly by son has never liked it either!), so we opted to paint pumpkins using these Mod Sticks Tempera Paint Markers. They worked perfect for this activity! Next year we will try carving pumpkins to see how my girls like it! 

Halloween Picture Books

I know, I know. Halloween is over and we are full throttle into Thanksgiving and Christmas, but since my blog was under construction during the month of October I am just now getting time to sit down and share our favorite Halloween books! 

These books have been well loved by my son (who is now 8) for many years and now his sisters are enjoying them. 

One of my favorites is Little Goblins Ten by Pamela Jane. If you haven't gotten this book yet, go for it. It is a spooky twist to the nursery rhyme "Over in the Meadow". It is a fun and cute Halloween picture book. 

In Kindergarten my son read The Witch has an Itch by Donna Guthrie and instantly loved it so much we had to have it at home! 

Anything that involves Mickey and Minnie is a HIT with my two year old twins. We read this Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Haunted Clubhouse over and over and over this season. It was a definite favorite here!

What are your favorite Halloween picture books? What should we add to our collection?

Five for Friday {October 18}

What a week this has been! We've done lots of fun things in Room 440 and experienced quite an emotional day today. First, let's look at the fun things we've done!

{One}

On Tuesday I only had 1/2 of my class and I had 1/2 of the other 5th grade class because a lot of our students performed a chorus concert outside of school. So, I let the students who didn't participate and were at school with me do a fun craft to decorate my door and my partner teacher's door.

{Two}

That same day we used alphaboxes to come up with words related to our study of westward expansion. Then, we created an ABC book about westward expansion. It turned out really cute!

{Three}

In Science, students designed a container to hold an egg for our egg drop experiment. We had a total of 10 containers, 5 from my class and 5 from the other 5th grade class. Would you believe that ALL 10 eggs stayed completely intact?!  I hated missing the experiment, but I actually had a doctor's appointment and missed it. I couldn't believe that NONE of the eggs broke or cracked!  Here are my classes containers.

{Four}

My son and I had a mini Science lesson this week! I found this wasp nest that my husband had knocked off earlier. After making sure there were no wasps in it or nearby, we placed it in a ziploc bag to hold it and observe it! When asked what it looks like, E said, "Well, it's brown like a bear or a spider and it has holes". Observant little guy and everything has to do with some type of animal! :)

{Five}

Although this week was lots of fun, today it ended on a sad note. I told my students that I was moving at the end of the second nine weeks (due to my husband getting a promotion at work). I knew I'd have some students cry, but their reaction was so much worse than what I'd expected. They were so heartbroken and cried much more than I thought they would. It was just plain awful! Tonight I'm saying a big prayer for peace for their sweet and heavy hearts.

At lunch they all got together and said really loud "We love you, Mrs. Geren!" It just about broke my heart into. What sweet, sweet students they are!

Fall Bulletin Board

I'm just popping in for a quick post! In our school, we have two bulletin boards in the main hallway. Teachers are assigned one month of the year to decorate the bulletin board. October was my month!

Granted, I've been cuter but I let my students pick out everything, from the title to the the problems! Each student chose a Math problem to solve and wrote it either on a leaf or a pumpkin.

Tomorrow we will do a fun craft to decorate our door!

Monday Made It!

Good morning, y'all!  It's time for another round of Monday Made It!  I am excited to show you what I made last week!  

I bought these pumpkin/fall cutouts at Dollar Tree for $1.00 a few weeks ago and planned to write Math problems on them.  Two weeks ago I showed you my Pumpkin Place Value for Monday Made It (Click here if you missed it).  This week I did the same thing, except I didn't use place value.  This time problems were: estimating sums and differences, rounding, adding and subtracting decimals, and multi-step story problems.  The answers are on the back so students can self check their answers.

After seeing this SUPER CUTE chevron background, I decided to re-do my binder covers again!!  I actually made new covers about a month ago, but I LOVE this background so I did them again!  

This week I am spending time at one of my favorite places: the beach! We live about 3 1/2 hours from the beach, but that can still be a long drive for my little one, who is 3 years old.  So, I decided to make a road trip notebook!  First, I bought a binder and a pencil pouch.  I already had the page protectors and all of the materials I put inside.  Inside the pencil pouch, I put some crayons for him to use.  Then, I filled the page protectors with things like coloring pages, blank pages with stickers, and thin books.  I got this idea HERE.  Here are some pictures of our road trip notebook!  

Looking forward to seeing all of the other Monday Made It's!!



Pumpkin Place Value

Can you guys believe it is July 1st?  Eeekkk!  My summer is going by so very fast!  Time needs to S-L-O-W down!  This morning I am linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It!

While I was shopping at Dollar Tree last week {love that store}, I saw these cute pumpkin cutouts and knew I could do something cute with them.  

Monday Made It #1: Alphabet Matching Game

This is, of course, for my 3 year old.  He loves to play "school" and loves to practice letters, shapes, etc.  These will be great to match uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as practice putting the ABC's in order.

Monday Made It #2:  Pumpkin Place Value

Next year we are adopting a new Math textbook (enVision) and the first unit in 5th grade is place value.  I made these pumpkin place value questions for students to practice with.  The answers are on the back so that students can easily self check.

Last year in 4th grade, I put multiplication problems on foam shamrocks {also found at Dollar Tree} and my students LOVED solving them!  It was so cute to see how excited they were just because their Math was on something different.  Hopefully the excitement will continue with Pumpkin Place Value!

Thankful Link Up

Friends, can you believe it is already November?  Today I am linking up with Stories by Storie for a Top 10 list of what I am thankful for!

Here are things I am thankful for!

1) God - Thankful for a loving God!
2) Hubby - He's such a hard worker and Easton thinks he hung the moon.
3) Easton - My sweet little boy is my entire world!
4) Family - Love them and miss them so much!
5) Friends - I am thankful for good friends!
6) School - Love where I work at.
7) Home - With all the destruction from hurricane Sandy, I am thankful for a home with electricity, heat, and plenty of food to eat.
8) Little moments - It's the little moments that mean the most!
9) Military - So thankful for all of our troops, past and present, that sacrifice their family time and their life to keep us safe.
10) Country music - I know this sounds silly, but I absolutely love the world of country music. :)

Have a good week, friends!

Veterans Day

Tonight I want to share with you how we celebrate Veteran's Day at my school and in my room. I brought up the discussion "What is a veteran?" to my class and let my students share their thoughts and questions. Most had a good idea of what it means to be a veteran, how we should be so thankful and appreciative to our veteran's, etc. So many hands started popping up "My uncle was in the war", "My papa was in the Navy", so I allowed every student to share if they had a family member in the military and a little about them. The kids loved hearing it and I thought it was interesting. I shared that my Papa was in Vietnam, my father-in-law is a retired Colonel of the Tennessee National Guard, and my brother-in-law also served in the Tennessee National Guard. Then, I read the book "America's White Table", which almost brought tears to my own eyes and did bring tears to one students eyes. I felt like they really "got it".
We wrote letters to veterans that a local church was sponsoring which gave me the idea to have my students write letters to a veteran I highly respect: my father-in-law. We started by discussing what we might say to him and I wrote some words that they might need help spelling. After they wrote their first drafts, I had a writing conference with each of them, and then allowed them to start on their final drafts.

My father-in-law is a retired Colonel but has a job where he is helping to train soldiers. The kids were pretty interested in that. I cannot WAIT to send these letters to him!

We also had a Veteran's Day assembly that was really good. Did you do anything special for Veterans Day?

We are still in the middle of our astronomy unit and we have started a monthly moon sketch. Each student got a copy of a calendar of the month of November and we are doing nightly moon sketches. You should've seen the kids faces when I told them they had to do it this weekend (we never give homework over the weekend). I had to remind that it only takes about 30 seconds to look outside at the moon and draw it! I checked out lots of books from the library to go with our astronomy unit that the kids can read during independent reading or as an early finisher. Most of them have read them!