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!

 

{Pumpkins} & {Spiders}

 

I have a disclaimer: this may be a realllyyyy long blog post. We did SO much over the last few weeks and we documented at least half of it. ;) This is my absolute favorite month of the year. Pumpkin lattes, cooler weather, hayrides and hoodies. Also, pumpkins, bats, spiders, & monsters at the ECDC. The peas seem to share my enthusiasm. We have had so much fun over the past few weeks and I'm just now catching up! So, I'll start with:

These are just a few of the pumpkin books we read. There are SO many incredible pumpkin books. If you have never read the Ugly Pumpkin and you are near a library, go get it, you won't be disappointed! Pumpkin Jack is one of my favorites and although we haven't introduced this year's peas to the compost pile yet, the peas did pick up on the idea to place our pumpkin in the garden and allow it to decompose after Halloween.

 Pre-K 1 began with a pumpkin morning message.

 Pre-K 2 started by making pumpkins sitting on a gate!

Here's a great video of the poem that goes with it.

 They also began a pumpkin investigation.

 

In Pre-K 1 we added pumpkins to blocks with a tractor, farm and pumpkin books. We also challenged the peas to make a hay maze out of blocks!

 Both classes did a pumpkin color word sheet, the beginning of our sight word work.

 Pre-K 1 added a new poem to our journals and illustrated it.

We added the weekly poem to our pocket chart so the peas could use pointers to read the poem. They may have it memorized by now! Here it is:

Pre-K 2 also added poems to their journals and illustrated them. 

Here is their poem: 

In Pre-K 1 we cooked up a pumpkin-pie snack. We added whipped cream to canned pumpkin mixed with vanilla pudding over graham crackers. It was yummy.

 In art, we made silly face pumpkins. First we finger painted the colors red and yellow to make a secondary color: orange! Later, the peas drew a big oval/circle on the back. I cut it out for them and they added a mouth, eyes, teeth, stems and grass. The peas experimented with cutting for this project, and after all the practice we've done they did a great job!

The project took several days, but it was worth it.

I really can't get over these pumpkins. I LOVE them. They each have their own personality and they shared on the carpet if their pumpkin was silly, happy, scary, etc. 

 Pre-K 2 opened up their pumpkin and counted their seeds. They had over 200! They sorted them into groups of ten because they are phenomenal counters! Afterwards, they carved their pumpkin.

 Pre-K 1 learned about voting. We could choose from different eyes, noses and mouths. Each pea could add their tally mark under the one they liked best. The ones that had the most tallies won and that's how we carved our pumpkin!

Pre-K 2 read this favorite story-

 

 and then the did a cooperative art project. It is one of my favorite things they do every year. The peas are broken up into groups and each group works to complete one part of the scarecrow's body. They brainstorm and collaborate to decide the best way to form their body part. Here they are in action:

At the end they assemble all of the parts into one giant scarecrow!

They also did a great counting activity after reading the book Sixteen Runaway Pumpkins.

 They used their fingerprints to make their own sixteen runaway pumpkins.

They also made a pumpkin with the life cycle. So cool guys.

 

 

 Both classes added pumpkins and spiders to our sensory tables.  

After pumpkins, we moved onto spiders!

Here's a few spider books we read.

Both classes made a K/W/L chart to start the week.

 We read some factual books and did some research on the ipads to get started.

 Both classes did an independent sequencing spider sheet for assessments. They did great!

 

 

In Pre-K 1 we learned a new poem called "The Silly Willy Spider". We used a bean bag to act out the poem.

 Pre-K 2 made marble painted spider webs and then created amazing spiders to live on the webs.

Pre-K 2 made webs, too! We made ours by weaving yarn around a plate and adding plastic spiders. We practiced our handwriting, too.

We began our week with a spider morning message. I love these little emergent readers and their sweet drawings and handwriting. Every time they do morning message they add their names, so we are practicing names often.

We added our silly willy spiders poems to our journal and illustrated them.

 In math we measured spiders with Cuisenaire rods, patterned spiders and matched numeric spiders.

 They are doing amazing in both classes with their numbers since we do daily work every day. We see them recognizing more and more numbers.



 The big event of the week in both classes was Miss Spider's Tea Party. We read this book-

Pre-K 1 graphed whether they would accept the invitation. 

 Everyone said yes! 

We had spider juice and spider tea cakes.

 It was delicious.

 Here's Pre-K 2's party. They made spiders out of oreos and pretzel sticks!

Over in Pre-K 1 we set up our home center with insects, a tea set and Miss Spider's book. Tea parties were held.

 Pre-K 2 rounded out the week making this giant spider web out of yarn. They threw the yarn across the circle to weave their very own web!

 Pre-K 2 got really tangled up in some spider web material Ms. Amy got us! We ended up hanging some of it from the ceiling over our circle time carpet.

 They also got tangled up in Pre-K 2!

 Pre-K 1 rounded out the week making oreo pretzel spiders that Pre-K 2 shared with us. We carefully counted out 8 legs, added them to our cookies and then ate our spiders. 

 Delicious!

 So that's a wrap on our pumpkin/spider weeks. Next week we will be learning about bats. Until then...have a wonderful weekend!