Bats, Owls, Monsters & a Costume Parade, too!

October was a busy month! Here are a few things we did in Pre-K. :)

We discussed owls and bats, and we started with owls. The peas LOVED this book. I read it every day more than once. They love baby Bill, the smallest owl. This story opened a conversation up about nocturnal animals.

 We made our own counting Owl Babies books at art using our fingerprints to make baby owls.

This pea asked if he could stamp Ms. Angela's finger so his wouldn't get painty. 

 They cut out branches to glue on each page! 

 We used a copy of the book cover as our cover so we could retell the story while we looked at it.

Next up, we discussed bats. We looked up a new kind of bat every day! 

 We read this story:

and then we discussed common phrases people use like "blind as a bat". We also discussed how we can use describing words. Then we made our own describing word (simile) bats!

 First we traced and cut out a bat shape, then added details.

 After gluing them together each pea thought of a word that described them. One pea said "I'm as smart as a teacher!" Thanks!

 

We learned a lot of bat facts, but here's just a few! They loved that baby bats are called pups. I called them my little bat pups all week and they would dissolve into giggles every time.  

Next, we had some fun talking about monsters. We read this cute story about a monster who thought little boys and girls were scary.

 We did some monster puzzles for fun.

 And added buttons eyes to monsters in a roll and count game.

 We made shape monsters at art. 

 Love this little guy!

We put out some monster words and made a chain at writing.  

 Every year I put this out because every single pea loves to add a ring, but they have to write a word first and they always do it!

 See? :)

 One of our favorite activities was about engineering. We read about haunted houses and talked about how people decorate their houses with jack-o-lanterns, spiders, bats and ghosts around this time of year. We decided we would make some not-so-spooky haunted houses at blocks. Here's the directions:

 They would go there and build and they took it very seriously!

 Collaboration...

 Teamwork....

 After everyone built houses, I printed the pictures in black and white and we added some seasonal stickers to finish off our haunted houses. Then we made them into a class book!

We had a ton of special dress days and this was just one: hat day! They wanted to do a silly face picture. They are so stinking adorable. 

 We read one of my all time favorite stories and added the words to the pocket chart for re-telling.

 I love seeing this! They were reading the story together.

 Precious.

 Ms. Amy gave us this next activity and I am SO glad she did, it was their favorite thing we did all week. She gave us this book:

with laminated pictures of each character. This book is SO cute. Different monsters scare the trick-or-treaters in a countdown. We started taking pictures of the activity...

 look at their faces!! I love it. But we couldn't convey how much fun this was in pictures.

So, Ms. Angela took a video. Check it out here: 

 

Lastly, we prepared for our costume parade. We made Care Bear costumes this year. 

I tried to get pictures of every one, I'm not sure I got everybody, but here are some super duper cute Care Bears in Pre-K 1. 

 

 

 

 They were the cutest bunch of Care Bears I've ever seen. Happy Thursday everyone!

 

{Halloween} & {Pumpkins}

This is a late post, but better late than never because there are so many adorable things to share with you! For Halloween each year, the ECDC hosts a costume parade and each class makes their costumes at school. This year Pre-K 2 dressed as Smurfs:

Pre-K 1 dressed as scarecrows!

Molly also hosts an annual Pumpkin decorating contest, which is one of my absolute favorite things we do all year. Families bring the most amazing pumpkins and they are displayed all week long.

This year, the Very Hungry Caterpillar Pumpkin won 1st place, the gumball machine won 2nd place and the Nemo won 3rd place. We also had a facebook favorite, which was the salad man. Pre-K 1 & 2 families made some of my absolute favorite pumpkins this year, great work everyone!

 In Pre-K 1 we started our pumpkin week with some optional writing sheets. I LOVE this picture of my boys choosing to work on writing. They earned a Halloween ring for their efforts. Many times its the girls waiting to write, but how sweet are these boys working together?

And they did a FANTASTIC job!

Pre-K 2 carved a pumpkin in class!

They got to feel the ooey gooey inside of the pumpkin.

In Pre-K 1 we made this round pumpkins and filled in blank on the center which says, "A Pumkin is as round as..." They did great thinking outside of the box!

Pre-K 2 made these super cute pumpkin faces. Lots of painting, cutting, gluing going on here.

Pre-K 1 has embarked on a pumpkin project. We discussed what would happen if we filled our pumpkin with soil and allowed it to decompose. We hypothesized about what will happen to the pumpkin over the next few weeks. It's outside right now, and there has been a change! We will be taking pictures monthly to see what changes occur. When the pumpkin gets squishy enough, we are going to set it in a large pot of soil. We plan to keep it through the year!

 We read some great fall books. Here's a few:

Pre-K 2 learned about night time animals that live in trees and then they made these sweet paper bag owls.



We also read lots of books about seasons and discussed how trees change. Then we made fall trees at art. Here's one of Pre-K 2's trees.

In Pre-K 1 we read a book about fall leaves changing colors and why that happens. Then we group painted beautiful fall colors onto large white butcher paper. After it dried, I cut lots and lots of leaves out.  

I had some helpers!

 Next, we cut trunks and branches and glued them to paper. Then we added our painted leaves.

Each tree was well thought out and very unique.

I love how varied and diverse they turned out and watching all these different little minds at work.

Here's one finished product. Cute boy, cute tree! :)

 In Pre-K 2 they worked on making shapes from colored popsicle sticks.

Then they made their own.

Great spacial reasoning and shape recognition peas!

Then, Pre-K 2 made Ice Cream in their class for letter I. Super fun!

They had to shake, shake, shake their bags for a LONG time.

But it was well worth the effort.

That's it for now, we are well into November now and gearing up for Thanksgiving. Happy Monday!