Our blog was experiencing some technical difficulties last week and none of the new updates would post! After emailing back and forth with Google, things seem to be back to normal so I will try to repost a summary of the past two weeks. Thanks so much for your patience...I know you have missed looking at your sweet babies!! Hopefully things will be back to normal now!
First, check out some of our Halloween activities!
We have been talking lots about spiders during Halloween! After discussing what spiders eat, we started thinking about how spiders can walk on their webs so easily when their prey sticks to the web. So....we did a little experimen to find outt. First, we used our fingers to walk on masking tape to get a feel of what bugs feel when they try to walk/crawl on a spider web. We noticed that it was very sticky and pretty hard to move on. Then, we dipped our fingers in magic goo (oil) and transformed into a spider. When we walked on the tape with our spider fingers, we didn't stick!! Why don't spiders stick to their webs? We learned that spiders have oil on their legs so they are able to walk without sticking to their webs!
We also read "Five Little Pumpkins", watched a digital clip of the story on the Smart Board, and then took turns acting it out!
We danced to the "Monster Mash!"
And, of course, we had to carve our jack o'lantern! We took turns going through each part of the face and voted on how we wanted each part to look! Our pumpkin ended up with sleepy eyes, a triangle nose, and a scary mouth! We also got to feel the gooey insides and drew a picture of what we saw!
We read and acted out Big Pumpkin, too! It's about a witch who grows a great big pumpkin and can't get it off the vine. A ghost, a vampire, and a mummy all come to help her, but none of them are able to get the pumpkin off. Finally, a little bat comes along with an idea to work together to get the pumpkin off and, though the others laughed at him, his idea worked! In the end, the witch used the pumpkin to make pumpkin pie that she shared with her new friends! Our cast consisted of Gabby as the witch, Breanna as the ghost, Olivia as the vampire, Aubree as the mummy, and Landen W. as the bat!
We also made several language charts this week!
We talked about what we might hear, see, and feel in a haunted house after reading Inside a House That Is Haunted!
We talked about witches brew and everyone got a special treat to take home!
We talked about things we are afraid of before we read The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything!
Some students made story maps during small groups after reading Froggy's Halloween and Spookley the Square Pumpkin!
And, we made a chart sharing our cool Halloween costumes!
We also played two fun games on Halloween day. First, we made a giant spider using a ball of yarn and, then, we played a counting trick or treat game where we chose a card to see how many pieces of candy we could get!
We also had "pirate" readers from Mrs. Chapman and Mrs. Stapp's 2nd grade class share Halloween stories with us!
Mrs. Melba taught us "If You're a Monster and You Know It!"
Our Halloween party was a blast!! Thanks to all of our parents who helped make it so awesome!
And how about those treat bags!! Two books AND pencils!! The kids were so excited about such incredible treat bags!! Our classroom moms rock!!
Halloween 2011
