Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins!!!

Yesterday we went on our first field trip to the Pumpkin Patch!  The kiddos had a great time learning about the pumpkin farm and the life cycle of a pumpkin. We are lucky to have a real working pumpkin farm less than an hour away so our students got to see the actual pumpkin plants and pick out their own pumpkin.  We even got to go through a corn maze and take a hayride.

As a follow up to the field trip we read Pumpkin, Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington.  Students then wrote the stages in the life of a pumpkin and made this adorable 3D pumpkin life cycle to hang in our classroom.

If you like this project you can get it for free from our TPT  store or by clicking here.

Color Poem Craft: Thanksgiving Comes Early!

In TK we have been practicing reading color poems to learn color names and introduce sight vocabulary words. Every student gets a chance to be the teacher and using a pointer leads the class in the different color poems. As a child "successfully" reads the poem, they receive a "feather" for that color to add to their peacock. Students also follow-up with an activity by making their own color book to practice at home.

Color Word Books Avaliable at our TPT store

In the past I have used construction paper peacocks and added real feathers to make the peacocks but it becomes messy and the students have a really hard time gluing on the feathers. I saw these colorful peacocks this year on TPcraft.com and loved them. What a clever way to reuse those paint chips! My students loved being able to see the peacock's feathers grow each week as they learned a new poem. They were so excited to take them home when we finished with the last color. I loved it too when I overheard one of the mothers say "This TURKEY is so cute, I'm going to put it out for Thanksgiving!" You can't beat that...a 2 for 1 craft!

Spooky Halloween Cats

We just can't get enough of Halloween!  

Today our first graders made Spooky Halloween Cats!

First we practiced reading and sequencing a poem called "Black Cat."

 We snuck in some vocabulary instruction by discussing the meaning of the word roam.

Our kids got pretty creative with the cats' faces and tails 

and the pictures they drew for each page of the poem.

Go to our TPT store or click here to purchase this easy prep activity!

Creepy Coffins!

I am usually very skeptical of "easy" holiday crafts but this one was as easy as it gets.  I found these Martha Stewart Coffins on sale at JoAnn Fabric and Craft and decided to give it a try for some cute little holiday goodies!

We tried them today and they came out adorable!  First we made the boxes and then we filled them with candy and sealed them up to give as Halloween treats!

We filled our first batch with Hershey Kisses but my older son wanted to make fudge so we are going to fill our next batch of coffins with pieces of fudge!

Halloween Fun with a Language Arts Twist!

As teachers (and magicians) we are always trying to squeeze so much learning into each and every day but at the same time we want the kids to have fun. We do this by incorporating art and games into our learning activities.

This week while teaching our first graders about nouns and verbs we added in some Halloween fun by having them write and illustrate Halloween poems.  First we read the "Dogs Bark" poem from our Halloween Poetry Activity packet on TPT to review nouns and verbs. Then we introduced the noun and verb word cards from the packet.

We wrote one poem together using the "Dogs Bark" (noun, verb) format and then each child successfully completed their own poem!

To purchase our Halloween Poetry packet click here or visit our TPT store.

Later in the day we used the Halloween noun cards again for another writing activity!  This time we talked about adjectives and added color words to our pocket chart.

Our kids had previously written and illustrated an Eric Carle inspired class book called Yellow Bee, Yellow Bee (We are the Busy Bees!) and they loved reading it over and over! For this book, each child completed a page for our Purple Spider, Purple Spider class book!  We are sure it will be another class favorite!

To get this Spooky Halloween Class Book FREEBIE click here or visit our TPT store.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Mali-Boo Math Spiders

                                   We are getting ready for Halloween in Mali-Boo!
Today our first graders reviewed addition and subtraction facts by making Scary Math Spiders.
We divided the project into two parts.  Before lunch our students cut out their spider bodies, attached eight legs, and glued a number to the middle of the body( we used 7, 8, or 9). Then they glued on colorful circles around the body equal to that number. Last, they drew on their own unique face. While they were drying, they left the spiders on their desks during lunch break.

After lunch, the class brainstormed math facts for 7, 8, and 9.  Students then wrote four different addition facts on four strips of paper and four different subtraction facts on the remaining four strips. Students glued on the strips to create their legs. We hung the spiders above our desks with white yarn to decorate for Halloween and show off our fabulous knowledge of math facts.

We have a template for a spider and instructions available at our TPT Store or by clicking here.  We changed the shape of the body a little and added the dots this year to allow students to use the circles to help them brainstorm addition and subtraction facts.  In the past we have made all the spiders black but this year we changed it up and made purple, gray, and black spiders.  The kids had a great time and were very successful!  Some of our more advanced students wrote an addition fact and related subtraction fact on each leg!  They have made our room very colorful and ready for Halloween!

A Spook-tacular Halloween Idea!!!

Although the weather still feels HOT like summer here in Malibu, the calendar says it is October, so we decided it was time to begin decorating the room for Halloween!  Today our firsties made our Ghostly Halloween Glyph!  It was a super easy and very low prep project and the students had a great time!  If you want to try it out, we have the ghost templates and glyph key available for free on our TPT Store or you can grab it by clicking here!

When they had finished their Ghost Glyph I decided to use them to decorate my classroom front door.  To start I covered the door with black butcher paper.  Then I cut out three orange pumpkins (small, medium, and large).  I wrote Trick-Or-Treat on the pumpkins and stacked them on top of each other.  Sounds easy, but it was so hot today that I had to glue the pumpkins onto the butcher paper! Tape just wouldn't stick!

I backed the Ghost Glyph Key and put it up alongside our adorable ghosts flying around the pumpkins!  The kids were so excited the next morning when I opened the door and were asking their parents to find their ghost at pick-up!  Let us know if you try this!  We'd love to see your pictures!