Left over Halloween Fun?

It's November already!  Where did the time go!  Just wanted to post about some the fun we had this year in October!  I guess I was having too much fun to have time to post about it all!  I guess this post is a bit like leftover Halloween candy.... Hate to see the end of it!  

We learned about bats and discovered some new cool names for bats which we used to make a simple bat poem.  

The children seemed to really enjoy making the bats and did a really good job!

We had fun making these ghost eye trees with our Big Buddy class.  I found the tree idea on the Family Fun craft website.  I added the spider web stuff to make it look misty and some Halloween wire garlands and some foam ghost stickers to make it spooky!  

Our Big Buddy class also helped us make these covers for our Five Little Pumpkin books!  We also made Five Little Pumpkins on a Gate for a snack.  A take off on Ants on a Log!  We used celery sticks for the gate, five carrot rounds for the pumpkins, and Cheez Whiz for the "glue".  We have peanut allergies at our school so the Cheez Whiz is an alternate choice!  

They read their books with their buddies when they were done making the covers!

We also make five little pumpkin puppets on Halloween with the help of our parents. I hot glued the orange pompoms to the gloves beforehand.  The children just had to glue the fence posts to each finger, leaves on the top of the pompoms, and draw a face on the pompoms using a Sharpie.  

We also made the Mummy Dracula cans again this year!  Always a big hit with my students!  

Check out last year's post about how to make these guys!  Lots of fun! 

We have a door decorating contest each year for Halloween!  The children made count up haunted houses which we used for our entry!  Take a look!

They had a really good time decorating their haunted houses to match their count up story.  

We also made this fun quilt using squares and triangles.  You can find the printables for the haunted house and the bat poem in my Halloween Fun package at Teachers Pay Teachers.  It's free! 

Can't remember where I found this idea but would love to thank that person over and over again!  My guys love making this quilt!  

Hope everyone had as much fun on Halloween as we did!  

Fun with Ghosts

We have been having a lot of fun with ghosts!  I put together a little booklet about a ghost who finds that when he eats something he magically turns the color of what he has eaten!  

Then I had the students brainstorm different foods for different colors!  

After we had a starter list for each color I had the children create their own version of the story with their choices of food for each color!  We even had a list for what would turn the little ghost invisible!  

I had the students draw the food with a felt pen first.  Then they colored in the ghost using their crayons!  The picture using the felts really popped in the background of crayon!  

I ran off all the pages and had them stapled together with just one staple which I removed when they were ready to cut the pages apart and put them in the final book order.  I gave the students the booklet and then, I had the students draw the pictures first,  Then they added the correct vocabulary from the lists we had created.  Then I had them cut the pages apart and we collated them in their favorite order.  There is a title page for the front and and special ending page.  Of course, the ending was having the ghost eat something white to turn back to his original color!  

They loved this project!  We put the completed books in a little center and the children have been having a great time reading each other's books!  

I have put together a package of this activity on my Teachers Pay Teachers store! It is called Fun with Ghosts! 

We also made a counting book about ghosts!  

I used the pocket chart strips to introduce the One Little Ghost Said booklet. 

(We have one of those photocopiers that lets us enlarge to an 11 X 17 sheet from an 8 X 11 sheet.  I use that to make my pocket strips a bit bigger.  Works great!)

Then I encouraged the students to predict what type of poem this one might be based on the first couple of phrases.  Once they realize it is a count up we are off! 

Then I let them know that they will be creating a booklet version of the poem. 

We talked about using the strategy of counting the ghosts to figure out which sentence strip would go with which picture. 

The students were encouraged to cut out the sentence strips and glue them down before cutting out the individual pages and putting them in order.  We talk about the title page and the surprise Boo page at the end. 

The cover is very, very simple but very popular with my students!  I gave them a black construction paper cover and had them draw ghosts on the cover with their white crayons!  For the students who feel they can’t draw a ghost I encouraged them to trace their pointing finger with the crayon, add a waving line at the bottom, and add the eyes and open mouth shape!  

I also have the children highlight some of the words to help them practice their sight word recognition. 

Then they read their booklets with a friend.  Finally, they took them home to share them with their families! 

I have created two versions of the One Little Ghost said booklet!  One version is a simple booklet of the poem.  The other version lets the students match the correct words to the correct page.  This is a fun counting and reading activity.  You can use the version that best suits your students and age group!  

This activity is also part of the Fun with Ghosts package. Everything you need is in the package!

  Don't forget to take a look at my Halloween Fun package too!  It is Free! 

Hope you are having as much fun with Halloween as I am! 

Pumpkin Book Fun!

I really enjoy Halloween!  There are so many ways to introduce vocabulary and have the children practice their beginning sight vocabulary in a fun way!  Here is a little pumpkin patch of a Halloween vocabulary booklet we made recently!  

I have the students help match the correct words to the pictures in the pocket chart using the reading strategies we have been working on thus far. 

First I gave them a premade blank booklet to glue the pictures and corresponding words on.  I use 4 sheets folded in half and then stapled.  

I gave them one sheet of orange construction paper and had them round the corners off.  I staple the blank booklet to the orange paper leaving room to add the Halloween is strip to the top.  You can prepare the orange papers ahead of time if you wish to save some time! They glue the pictures in first and then add the corresponding word strips. We glue the phrase “And they all said, “Boo” on the orange pumpkin behind the booklet.  So when they turn the last page they see the phrase on the pumpkin. 

Thne I gave them two precut square green pieces of construction paper to make the leave and vine with!  We round the corners of both the pieces first.  Then one is cut into a spiral for the vine and the other is cut into a leaf shape for the leaf.  They love cutting the spiral.  I just tell them to keep cutting just inside their last cut until they can’t cut any further! One more piece of brown construction paper for the stem.  They glue on the stem and leaf and vine.  Sometimes I secure it a bit more firmly with a staple.

I have put this project together as a new package called Halloween is Fun at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  

The children really enjoyed this project and the added bonus is that the pocket chart strips become an instant word bank!

Here are a few sample pages from the package! Sometimes the children color in the bubble letters for the word Halloween in a simple Halloween color pattern! 

We have also been having fun with my Witches Brew Cafe activity from my Halloween Package! 

The children create recipes using the cloze menu sheet and then "serve" them!  They take turns making their friends recipes too!   Lots of counting and reading practise!  Very popular activity!  

I found all the cauldrons and bugs and so on at various dollar stores and Halloween displays over the years.  

You can find the menu sheet for this activity in my Halloween Fun package at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  It is FREE! 

There are a wide variety of activities in this package. 

They love doing the counting practice activity. I have collected those little Halloween erasers as counters.  I have also used the foam shapes you can find at the dollar store and craft stores.  They are inexpensive and the children love them! 

Hope you are enjoying Halloween as much as we are! 

Mummy Dracula Cans

Halloween is always a favourite of mine!  So many things to do!

One of my favourite things is the Halloween centre activities we do on Halloween Day! I usually try to run four different stations that the children rotate through in the hour.  One of the most popular is the Mummy/Dracula can.  When I first started to do this craft it was just a mummy pencil holder can made out of a tin can wrapped in strips of white fabric with googly eyes.  That was cool but THEN one of my parents came in and showed me how to turn it into a Dracula can!  TOO COOL!

To make the can into a Dracula can you need a piece of string and a little wet scrap of towel.  

You punch a hole in the bottom of the tin can with a nail.  Then you put a piece of string through the hole and tie a knot.  Let the piece of strip dangle down from the bottom of the can!  Take a small scrap of old towel, get it wet, and squeeze out the excess moisture.  Fold the piece of towel around the string, pinch it tightly and     slide the towel down the length of string.  If you are doing it correctly it will make a sound like Dracula laughing!  The quality of the sound changes depending on the size of the can.  Big cans make low sounds and little cans make squeaky sounds.  Needless to say, the children love it.  I make them promise that they will stop making the sounds when their Moms tell them to!  

We also made spider pops, a five little pumpkin glove puppet, and a spider web.  Lots of fun!

We also made these skeletons that we hung from the ceiling!  The children took them home on Halloween to help decorate their houses. Too spooky!   

Halloween Fun!

I love Halloween! Lots of fun things to do!
My class is in the midst of a door decorating contest at my school and my students did an awesome job! I found this great idea on Pinterest.  Will try to find the source for it for you!  But the results are awesome!

I got very brave this weekend and posted my very first package up on Teachers Pay Teachers!  Lots to learn on the way but with the help of my family we got it to work! It is a compilation of some of the Halloween projects I have put together over the last little while!   It has a little bit of everything!

Here are a few of the thumbnails I put up so you can get a taste of the package.  The package has 41 pages and it's FREE!  Check it out!

I did the Haunted House count-up booklet with my class today!  They did a great job.  I used the packages of foam stickers that you can get at the dollar store to make it a little bit easier.  I have also done it with the cut out pictures.  Like the results both ways!

The children really liked the idea of letting the characters peek through the windows!