Celebrating Halloween

What a spooktacular time for my little ones! To celebrate Halloween in our classroom the children dress up in their costumes, sing the cutest Halloween songs, pick pumpkins and end the special day off with a Halloween party! My own two beautiful children dressed in  costumes for their classroom parties too!

The day before Halloween the children painted wooden frames green (I purchased them from the local arts and craft store for $1.00 and used a 25% off entire regular priced order so they were $0.75 each!) Once the frames dried the children glued googly eyes on and a cute "Happy Halloween" sign in the top corner. My daughter got to make one too- she was SO happy in her princess costume!

The children even got a spooktacular sensory bin! I cooked pasta the morning I used the sensory bin in the classroom. Once the pasta cooled off I added a little bit of EVOO so it wouldn't stick together and then dyed it green. I bought some fun little extras to throw in at the local dollar store too!

 We also went bowling using a pumpkin and toilet paper I transformed into ghosts!  I saw this idea on Jeanetics, Fall Party ideas, simple yet so FUN! 

We decorated our class door for our Halloween party too. I found most of these cute Halloween cuties from A Cupcake for the Teacher. I LOVE her blog! 

Of course October wouldn't be complete without our Five Little Pumpkins craft (It is the peom that I have been practicing with my little one's since the first day of school!)

I cut the pumpkins out of orange card stock paper and found these mini wooden sticks in my classroom closet. I used white school glue to show the children where I wanted them to place the wooden sticks, five pumpkins and the poem- and they did the rest and what a great job they did!! As each child came up to do this craft I recited the poem with them, so you could imagine by the end of the day how I couldn't get the words out of my head :)

The children also got to create pumpkins using a piece of pool noodle and their fingers to add some details. 

 For the party the children made Halloween bags to put all their goodies in! The second picture of the bags all lined up was from two years ago. I realized that since the parents bring in so many things that the bags needed handles so this year we modified them slightly. :)

Some other cute Halloween crafts from my own two children. I LOVE the triangle witch since we taught the children about triangles in the month of October. Very creative!

 

 My kids each made a mummy with black eyes.

 My son and daughter made these bats out of egg cartons with their teachers, but I've seen this craft all over Pinterest- my FAVORITE place to find ideas. 

 My daughter made this adorable Halloween banner with her teacher last week. I have seen this project on Pinterest a lot this month. My daughter was so proud of her work that I hung it right on the fire place.

All about October!

I love everything about the fall! The leaves change to so many beautiful colors, the air is crisp, apple and pumpkin picking time is upon us and the children are all acclimated to our classroom routines. It's just a simply perfect time of the year. 

In October we learned about triangles, which is the shape of the month! The children painted candy corn triangles with orange and yellow paint, I found the template here. I use liquid water color paints for this project so it allows the paper to be more translucent against the window. 

They also made an autumn tree using different fall colored triangles for the leaves and their hand/arm for the bark and branches of the tree!  

Of course we couldn't finish October off without making triangle shaped Witches Hats. I found the original idea here, on pinterest, of course :) I printed out a black and white polka dot pattern on printer paper and used that as the backing for the hat. The children glued the pre-painted black popsicle sticks onto the paper making the triangle shape. I thought these came out SO cute! 

 This was a hat glued onto the printed polka dot paper. Once everything dried (I used tacky glue) I cut out the hats right along the sticks. It worked out great! 

They learned about the color orange by gluing tissue paper onto orange construction paper, which they made into a pumpkin later that week- personalized with their tiny hand for the leaf. We used a pool noodle and orange paint to make pumpkins! After the "pumpkins" dried I used their finger dipped into green then brown paint to make the stem and leaf. They also painted a white party bag with orange paint and made them into pumpkins which we used for our classroom Halloween party! 

For the color black, the other color of the month, they made a black crow using different shapes. We also made bats and spiderwebs! I love the spider web craft because it promotes fine motor skills development. Even if they had difficulty I was able to assist with hand over hand directions and by the end they were doing it themselves! 

This was my bulletin board downstairs in the preschool last year. 

Here are my own two children's from previous years at our preschool. 

Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere! We have done SO many fun things surrounding the food of the month, pumpkins! My little ones made their very own five little pumpkins sitting on a gate craft. This was a lot of fun for them since for the past month we worked out the song "Five little pumpkins" so they knew exactly what we were making when I lined up the 5 little precut pumpkins. We also explored and played with the inside of a very big pumpkin. 

The children made monsters, using the book, "Go Away, Big Green Monster" for inspiration. The day before we gave our monsters faces the children helped to drop green, purple, and blue paint onto one side of a piece of paper. We then folded the paper in over and pushed all the paint around to make a design. Once the paint dried I cut out the faces. They glued the pieces of the monsters face on by following the pages of the book. I love how we added sequencing into this project in such a fun way. 

Every year in our preschool year class gets to decorate a class pumpkin to put out on display for everyone to enjoy! This year our friends made Mike Wazowski and Sulley from Monsters, Inc. 

I love how they turned out! Everyone's pumpkins looked great, didn't they?!? 

This was last years pumpkins! My class made the mummy :) 

Here is my classroom bulletin board. We made mummy's using tissues that they tore up. Fine motor skill development at it's finest. After they glued all the tissues on, I put two drops of tacky glue on and they added google eyes. 

This year for Halloween I dressed up as a scarecrow, and since I am expecting (due March 2016) I ironed a simply adorable pumpkin transfer onto my white shirt. As I told my little ones, "this scarecrow picked the most precious pumpkin in the patch". 

Here are some things my own two children did during the month of October in years past. 

I made this sensory bin for my preschoolers last year. They loved the pasta but after a little while even with the EVOO that I added into the pasta it started to stick to them.