Happy Halloween

One of my favorite things to do as a teacher is to plan activities on special days.  This year the kids wore their costumes to school and we had a party that afternoon.  Since there are so many kids (you really don't know what you're missing if you haven't spent 8 hours a day with twenty seven 5 & 6 year olds!) and we have two rooms.....we had 6 different centers (3 in Margaret's room & 3 in mine) for our party.  I have to brag........we have the most amazing group of parents (which makes sense since our kiddos are so wonderful) and we could not have made it through the party without them!  A special thank you to Hayley for running to the store when we ran out of q-tips!!!!

This was our morning snack....it is supposed to look like candy corn.....the bottom layer is pineapple, the middle layer is mandarin oranges and the top layer is cool whip.

One center was to make a ghost......we had to keep the centers simple and ones that the students could do in about 10 minutes because we were trying to keep the party to about an hour long.

Making pipe cleaner bracelets.

These are the cupcakes I made for the class.....I had this grand idea of making a Frankenstein cake, but then I figured having to actually cut a cake would just take up too much time so I made spider cupcakes instead.  This also served as one of the centers.....the kids looked so cute with green icing all over their mouths!!!

One of our parents brought us the ingredients to make apple cider (Margaret's room smelled so good!!). I found this idea on Pinterest so we used these cups so the kids could sample some apple cider.

What Halloween party would be complete without a game of Halloween BINGO.

This activity went along great with our study of the human body.....these did take a little longer than 10 minuets to complete, but fortunately we are flexible and had parents that helped!!!

At the final center we had the students make Halloween bookmarks.  Our kids love reading so much that I thought it would nice for them to all get a new bookmark.

These are just some pictures I took during the day.......the kids seemed to have a great time!

Batman

making bookmarks

making skeletons

Dinosaur

making ghosts

making bracelets

drinking apple cider

making a skeleton

Obi Wan Kenobi

Dragon

One of the parents told me that I must have such a fun job......and I really do.  Yes teaching can be exhausting sometimes, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world!!  I feel so blessed to get to do what I love each and every day!

February Work

I am a bit no I'm very behind on my blogging so even though I just posted what we did in January this post is about what we have been doing in February.

ice cream blends

One new "shelf work" activity we have is called "I Scream for Ice Cream".  This template can be found here.  If you have never been to the Teachers Pay Teachers website I recommend you giving it a try.  In addition to activities/games/printables that you can purchase there are also TONS of freebies!  For "I Scream for Ice Cream" the student matches the different ice creams (which have words on them) with the ice cream cones that have different letter blends on them (sh, th, ch, wh).  This activity also has a sheet of paper where the students can practice writing the words.

Race to 50

This February math game is called "Race to 50".  The students have some sort of token (we used candy heart erasers).  Each student starts on 1 and rolls a dice.  The students moves the number of spaces on the dice.  This helps the students learn addition of higher numbers by saying the addition problem out loud.  For example if a student was on the number 35 and then rolled a 6....they would say "35 plus 6 is 41".....then the student would move their token to 41 and then pass the dice to the next player.

This is another math activity that our wonderful intern created for our students.  This math game is called "Bang" and the students love it!  Bang can be played with two or more players.  One great thing about this game is that it is simple to make and can be adapted for many different abilities.  On large craft sticks write some sort of math equation on the majority of them (we used addition) and then write the word "bang" on a few craft sticks.  The first player draws a stick and answers the math problem.  If they get it correct then they get to keep the stick.  If the students gets a "bang" then they have to put all of their sticks back into the container.  The first player to reach 5 sticks wins!

Another "shelf work" activity we have out for February is making patterns with hearts.  I also found this at TPT.  I printed out this template onto cardstock, colored it and then laminated it.  Pattens are found throughout math and it is so beneficial for our students to be able to recognize them.

The following pictures are of some other activities we are doing in our room....enjoy!

arranging flowers

heart shape cookie cutters & play dough

pink & red jewels to help with math

heart punches