Our Festive and Fun-Filled Halloween
After much anticipation and excitement, our classroom was buzzing with energy all day on Halloween Monday! The children spent the morning making "witches brew" by following recipe cards calling for various numbers of bats, fangs, bones and pumpkins. They were also mesmerized by creating pumpkin patches in the colorful sensory bins, as they practiced their fine motor skills by picking up pumpkins, spiders and more with their tongs. After a final practice for the evening's story time event, our morning meeting finished up with a secret message found at the end of our Room On the Broom book! The message led the children on a scavenger hunt throughout the classroom and out into the play yard. The final clue helped them to find the ghosts (white balloons) that had been hiding behind the bookshelf! Off they ran to play ghostbuster games out back in the beautiful and sunny weather! Afterwards we made a pumpkin volcano! The mud kitchen was set up as a "potion station", and the children were so excited to mix up special magic potions using the orange and purple colored water from the volcano, sand, flower petals, stones, and anything else that would do the trick! We finished out the day with some final preparations for the evening's event, with some of the students decorating a large spooky, spider-filled banner to display for the families!
Our first family event (ever!) was so much fun! We had a wonderful turnout, with many family members dressed in costume, along with their kids! It was the first time that we had both our Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday and our Thursday/Friday groups together, and they didn't miss a beat - all reciting poetry, singing, and story-telling together. We had all rehearsed lines and movements for our reading of Room on the Broom, and it was so nice to be able to surprise families with all of the clever props the children had made - from a "horrible beast" to a "truly magnificent broom", a Halloween-night backdrop for the performance, as well as a pumpkin piñata and a giant, hand-drawn and painted beanbag toss game! We all enjoyed some food and fun before heading out to trick-or-treat!
The next couple of day were spent a bit more peacefully, with some of the children enjoying paper weaving using colorful strips of construction paper, and others preferring projects such as pumpkin construction (using mini pumpkin candies, toothpicks, popsicle sticks and mini clothespins), and flower interpretations using construction paper, tissue paper squares and color pencils. We are always amazed at the creative ideas the children come up with when given open-ended projects to do!
Behind the library this week we enjoyed listening to fun stories, singing songs, and jumping into huge piles of leaves! Out in our garden, we harvested our final crop of beets, and bid the garden a fond farewell as it takes a rest until the spring. Back in the classroom we broke off into two groups for a while in the afternoons with the older children reading some special stories and focusing on phonics with Miss Katherine, as our younger students had some special play and snack time in the blue room with Miss Annacarin. On Wednesday we made our own pumpkin spice granola for snack using pumpkin puree, nuts, seeds, spices and maple syrup. In music class this week we made up our own melody using notes (Do, Re, Me, etc.) of the children's choosing. We also practiced some songs that we would like to sing in a small "concert" in December! More on that soon! :D
We have been so fortunate to have had warm and sunny weather to enjoy so far this week and we spent a good deal of time outdoors, as we always like to do! In fact, we had outdoor pickup this week because we just couldn't get enough! We hope you enjoy the remainder of the week, until we meet again! Don't forget to set your clocks back on Sunday night!
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