I love Halloween and all the fun activities that go along with it. I enjoy doing a Halloween learning theme each year. It's so much fun to see how the activities Carter is able to do have changed as he has grown and developed and I enjoy thinking of ways to make them more challenging as he gets older. This year was the most fun I've had with this theme by far. Elise got into a lot of the activities with us which was a blast. Read about last year's Halloween learning theme here and 2014's here.
Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks. I have revisedour objectives to really hone in and focus on specific skills Carter will need to master before kindergarten and are appropriate to his age and development right now. I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives. Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually. I have added working on his name as his teachers at school have asked us to work on it at home and I want to remember to include working on it in some form during each of our learning themes. I'm also adding in a section for Elise now that she is a year old. I don't considers
her bullet points objectives, they are experiences I want to make sure
to expose her to frequently. Her experiences are listed below Carter as bullet points rather than numbers.
The highlighted objectives below are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:
Begin to organize and focus on writing. (Dictate stories, plan out a story, draw pictures and scribbles to create a book).
Understand same and different.
Accurately tell stories as well as retell the story from a book.
Use
age appropriate scissors. (I'm moving on to looking for a thumb and
forefinger grasp with writing tools and holding scissors appropriately)
Develop a better understanding of time (for example, be able to describe when things happen using morning, afternoon, night)
Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature).
Count with one-to-one correspondence, begin to identify numerals, being to use ordinal numbers (first, second, last).
Recognize the letters in name, arrange them to spell name, begin to write name.
Experiences Elise was exposed to during our theme this week are highlighted below:
Pretend play/Imitate the behaviors of others.
Begin
to identify and point at body parts. (Right now I just want to say body
parts aloud to her frequently and point them out on myself)
Group based on simple characteristics. (This is something I will do while talking aloud and allowing her to feel objects)
Fill and empty containers.
Begin to hold writing tools and scribble spontaneously.
Identify sounds around her. (Point out sounds and ask her what is making the sound).
Activities/Movement:
I wrote the word Halloween on a sentence strip. I had Carter point out the letters he recognized and then we talked a little bit about the letters and letter sounds in the word. When we were finished I taped the strip up on our learning theme board for the week.
Talking about the letters he knows in the word Halloween.
The Halloween sensory bin is always a huge hit. The base was dry black beans and then I put spider rings, foam spiders, pumpkins, our skeleton toys from our body parts learning theme, a scarf, fake eyes, pumpkin ice cube tray, Halloween ice cube tray, and a spoon in the bin for the kids to play with. Elise loved filling the pumpkins with beans and then dumping them out. Carter always comes up with goofy games to play and enjoyed trying to scare Elise with the fake eyeballs.
Using materials from the sensory bin Carter made up his own game. He would roll a fake eyeball on the floor and then try to catch it in a pumpkin by using just one half of the toy pumpkins. He would just put the pumpkin down on the ground on top of the eye, catching it underneath. It was actually a really fun game. Carter and I ended up sitting on the ground rolling eye balls back and forth and catching them in our pumpkins.
The lighting is terrible but you can see how he used the top of the pumpkin to catch an eyeball.
I found some adorable Halloween lacing shapes last year in the Target dollar spot. I kept them along with the shoelaces that came with them in a little bowl on our craft table for Carter to play with whenever he wanted. He enjoys lacing them and will occasionally sit down to do it on his own. Elise liked putting the shoelaces on like they were a necklace and walking around the house with the shapes.
I like to keep themed materials out for the kids to have easy access to them. I put a bunch of Halloween cookie cutters along with orange and black Play Doh in a tub on the craft table. We played Play Doh multiple times throughout the learning theme. Carter had a blast making different creepy shapes as we played.
We read The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. I had Carter feel the spider's web in the illustration. Then we made spider webs of our own. I planned for Carter to draw out a spider web and then go over it with glue to make it raised like in the book but he didn't want to make one. He asked me to make it so he could watch. So I made one and then let him feel it once it had dried.Then Carter, Elise, and I all made spider webs out of masking tape. I put spider rings on my web and made up a 5 Little Spiders song to the tune of 5 Little Ducks.
Carter waiting for my glue web to dry so he could feel it.
Carter working on his web.
Elise working on making her web.
Carter working on his web while I sang him songs using my web.
The kids enjoyed our firefighter clothing dress up bin so much last week that I decided to put together a Halloween dress up bin for this learning theme. I put some Halloween scarves and necklaces in the bin along with a few costumes we bought onsale after Halloween last year and at Goodwill this year. The bin was a huge hit. Elise would run to me holding up one of her dresses and she'd get so excited she'd bounce up and down as I helped her put it on, it was absolutely adorable and worth all $5 that we spent!
The kids were so excited to look through the dress up bin.
Carter putting on a cape and a scarf.
We read a book with mummies in it. Then to practice with body parts we wrapped different parts of our bodies like a mummy. I would ask the kids to lift a leg or hold out an arm and I'd wrap each part of their body until their bodies were wrapped like a mummy, minus their heads. Carter loved it and got upset that some would fall off when he moved around so I kept re-doing his. Elise hated having it on. She'd stand still for me to wrap her and then the moment I was done, she'd rip it all off. She did a great job identifying body parts though!
Special themed bathtimes have become a favorite around here so we just had to do a Halloween-themed bath. First we made the water black. I told Carter we had red, yellow, and blue tablets and asked him what colors he thought we should mix to make black. He was a bit uncertain when he suggested all of them and was so excited when they made black! I had him grab some spider rings and fake eyeballs out of the sensory bin and I added our ice cube trays for a bunch of fun stuff to play with. They each also got Halloween grow capsules I found in the dollar spot at Target multiple times throughout the week.
Last year after Halloween my mom and I went to Target and bought some awesome stuff on sale. I picked out a Halloween tic tac toe board which Carter and I played together. She picked out a bean bag toss which is awesome. Carter loved tossing his bean bags and counting to keep track of how many points he had made. Elise was so cute when it was her turn, walking up and just placing her bag through the hole. It was great practice for Carter and Elise to take turns. Whoever threw the bags then went and got them and handed them to the person whose turn it was. That is until I went to take a video and then Elise refused to hand the bean bags over to Carter.
We used some foam ghosts I got on sale last year after Halloween to practice patterns. I would make a pattern and point out to Carter what the pattern was. Then I'd ask him what would come next in the pattern. He did great identifying what would come next in AB, ABC, and ABB patterns!
Carter telling me about the pattern in between sucking his thumb, he'd just woken from a nap and was still a little sleepy.
To practice with identifying sounds I played some Halloween-themed sounds for Elise, an owl hooting, a cat meowing, and a bat. I instructed Carter not to tell Elise right away, to give her time to identify the sounds on her own. She finally caught on to what we were doing toward the end after Carter identifying the animal noises for her so I played a dog barking and she yelled out "doggy!" It was very cute.
One year the classroom parent in charge of the Halloween party gave me materials from the games because she didn't want them. One of the games was a pumpkin cake walk. I have used the pieces multiple times with Carter and he again enjoyed the game. Last year I drew dots on the numbers so if he wasn't sure what numeral he was sitting on, he could count to figure it out. This year he was able to identify the numbers 1-3 just by seeing the numeral and then he counted the dots to figure out all the others. He played a few rounds before telling me it was my turn because he wanted to be in charge of the music and drawing the winning number. He kept cheating for me, telling me what number to sit on or checking the numbers to make sure he picked the one I was sitting on. Elise wanted a turn but then just laid down on the numbers and wouldn't move. It was pretty funny!
Pointing out the number 1.
Checking to see what number he was on.
Talking about when we trick-or-treat was a great opportunity to discuss time. Carter told me we trick or treat at night when it is dark. Then we discussed what we were going to do on Halloween day. We split it into morning, noon, and night. I told him we would go to the pumpkin patch in the morning, eat scary face pancakes at IHOP in the afternoon, and then trick-or-treat at night. He was excited about all of our Halloween activities but was the most excited about trick-or-treating. The day after Halloween I had him plan out a book about our day. He dictated what to write and wasn't interested in drawing so Elise illustrated the book.
I've been working in various different ways for Carter to practice his
name. With this theme I wrote his name out on a piece of paper. I had
him point out and tell me the letters in his name. Then he used candy
corn to write out his name over the letters. He loved doing it and
actually sat and worked hard, covering all 6 letters.
We had an impromptu Halloween party on Friday morning. When I told Carter we didn't have anything planned he suggested having a Halloween party. He and Elise picked out costumes and I dressed each of the dogs in costume, we were dog sitting for Thomas so we had 2 extra dogs at our house. Then we had a blast playing all of our Halloween themed games while listening to our Wee Sing tape. Carter suggested we have some balloons at our party so I blew up an orange balloon and a black one to go along with our theme.
All of our party goers ready for some fun!
Craft:
A friend sent me the idea to make candy corn footprints with a cute saying to go with it and I loved it. I saved the idea in my e-mail so I wouldn't forget and when our Halloween learning theme rolled around we made sure to create the adorable craft. Carter was so excited to see how it looked but was disappointed that the white of his footprint didn't show up better. I thought it looked great. When I went to switch out last year's Frankenstein and ghost footprints for this year's candy corn footprints in my frame I felt a little sad about how much bigger Elise's footprint is now! Both kids have grown so much!
Last year after Halloween I got some foam ghosts and bats for super cheap. I got them out and let Carter decorate one of each with stickers and drawings. He wanted to write his name on each one and was very proud of how he wrote his name on the ghost.
One day as we were walking through Goodwill I found a package of Halloween sponges that hadn't even been opened. I bought them and let Carter use them to make a painting. I gave him black and orange paint and he did a wonderful job with it, even being careful to keep his clothes clean.
Carter got to pick out a pumpkin at school from his school's pumpkin patch. They decorated their pumpkins after nap time and Carter comes home at noon after a half day so I let him paint his pumpkin at home. He really enjoyed getting to paint it inside since he's such a big boy and wanted to use paintbrushes again so I gave him one to paint with.
The library closest to our house had a craft night the week before Halloween. I asked Carter if he wanted to wear a costume or his skeleton jammies and he picked the jammies. I had speed work planned so Ty offered to take the kids by himself while I did speed work and I would meet them there. I made it right as they were getting ready to leave. They both got to decorate bags to put some candy in and then Carter made a skeleton out of Q Tips.
The bags Carter and Elise decorated for their candy.
Carter's Q Tip skeleton.
The kids in their skeleton jammies ready to walk home from the library.
Special Snack:
For a fun and healthy Halloween snack, since they got enough sweets trick-or-treating, I drew a jack-o-lantern face on Halos and a ghost face on the packaging of string cheese. They enjoyed that multiple times throughout the week and thought it was pretty awesome. Jake got so excited when he saw a Halo with a jack-o-lantern face for the first time which was hilarious.
Carter with his festive Halo and string cheese.
Each year on Halloween IHOP gives kids a free scary face pancake. We went last year and Carter loved it. This year we invited all of our friends to come with us after the pumpkin patch so we had quite the crew. There were 4 adults, 8 children, and 2 babies with us. Both kids enjoyed their pancakes! One of the waitresses there was so excited to see kids dressed up, she came in to talk to us even though she wasn't waitressing our table. She evengave a sticker to each of the kids.
All the kids and one mom at IHOP.
Elise eating her pancake.
Make Believe:
Carter loved dressing up as different characters from our dress up bin and pretending to be them. His favorites were the police officer and Olaf. He liked being in charge when he was a police officer and he liked pretending he was made of snow and cold when he was Olaf. He was so cute telling Elise what a pretty princess she was in her dresses.
Carter dressed as a police officer and Elise dressed as Snow White.
Carter dressed as Olaf while Elise is dressed as Belle.
Another make believe favorite of Carter's was throwing a blanket over our heads and walking around pretending to be ghosts. He especially loved trying to scare people but became terrified if I ever snuck up on him dressed as a ghost. We figured out Elise's blankets work the best for being a ghost because they are lightweight and you can see through them.
Carter the ghost.
Carter is so good at pretend play. He loves to make up games and is always making toys talk and coming up with ways for us to play. Multiple times throughout the week I found him sitting at his craft table playing with the shapes for lacing. He would make them talk to each other and would come up with plans for them to do. It was very cute to hear.
Carter making his characters talk to each other.
Songs:
Carter loved listening to The Spooky Wheels on the Bus which I sang every time I read the book. Then we would sing it making up our own spooky things to add in. We also listened to The Monster Mash and the Ghost Busters song along with Thriller and a few others that came up in a Halloween mix on Youtube.
We also listened to my Wee Sing Halloween tape a co-worker gave me my first year teaching. We listened to it over and over. Carter absolutely loved it. Any time he was in the kitchen, he'd go over to the tape player and start it.
I sang the 5 Little Spiders and 5 Little Cats from last year along with a 5 Little Spiders song to the tune of 5 Little Ducks that I made up while we were playing with our spider webs we made out of masking tape.
Technology:
I downloaded a Halloween Coloring app which Carter played a couple of times. It was basically just paint with different Halloween-themed coloring pages. He liked practicing using my phone to play it. Carter also played an app I downloaded called Halloween Play and Learn. He was only able to play 2 of the games for free. One of the games you dragged a face and items onto a monster and the other one you dragged items ino a witch's house. I wasn't impressed with either of these apps but they were better than any of the other Halloween apps I found. I always search for what I want, download a bunch, and play them to decide which ones to delete and which ones to keep for Carter to play.
Field Trip/Interactive Experience:
The weekend before Halloween we went to Boo on Broadway. The kids both dressed up and got to walk to different stations to trick-or-treat. There were also some games and inflatables which Carter enjoyed. Elise wanted to go into a bounce house really badly but then when it was her turn she wouldn't go in. At one point there was a long line at a booth to get candy. Elise just walked over to the side of the table and grabbed candy out of the bag they had for refilling their bucket, bypassing the line. It was hilarious. She definitely knows how to work it! We saw a group of kids dressed as the seven dwarfs so my mom asked to get a picture of Elise with them since she was Snow White, it was so cute!
Carter and Elise walking to Boo on Broadway.
Elise, Snow White, with the seven dwarfs.
On Halloween we went to the pumpkin patch for a special Halloween playdate. The kids all dressed in costumes but ended up taking them off because it got over 80 degrees while we were there! They had a blast playing in the inflatables and the corn bin as usual.
Before we headed out trick-or-treating we walked over to our local fire station to show off our costumes and our fire truck stroller. They definitely got a kick out of it and even let Carter climb up in their fire truck. I didn't know fire stations get trick-or-treaters and they gave us some candy out of their candy bowl which was nice. Then we headed over to our friend Grant's house to trick-or-treat with him. We will most likely make that an annual tradition as Carter and Grant love trick-or-treating together! It was even more fun this year because Grant could keep up with Carter and we made it to more houses. Elise wanted to walk some and would even run along to keep up with the boys. Carter and Grant would walk up to the house, knock or ring the doorbell, and then say trick-or-treat. They almost always remembered to say thank you and then Grant would say to Carter, "Let's go get more candy." It was hilarious. Elise would walk up onto the porch and was always running a bit behind so as she reached the house, the boys were already headed off. She'd just turn around and go back down the stairs without trick-or-treating at all. It was a hoot. Our next door neighbors gave Carter and Elise special treat bags when we went to their house and they also gave Carter a glow stick pick axe and Elise a glow stick princess wand. The wand was a hit with Elise and she carried it all night long. Any time the star fell off the end of her glow stick, she'd hand me her glow stick so I would fix it.
Elise dressed up and ready for trick-or-treating.
Carter and Elise trick-or-treating at our neighbors' house.
Riding to the fire station, I didn't strap them in so they decided to stand in the fire truck.
Carter in a real fire truck.
Trick-or-treating
Books:
My First Halloween by Tomie dePaola
The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams
Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson
Say Boo! by Lynda Graham-Barber
Goodnight Goon by Michael Rex
Fright Night Flight by Laura Krauss Melmed
Boo to You! by Lois Ehlert
Arthur's Halloween by Marc Brown
Halloween at Creepy Castle by Alison Inches
Clifford's Halloween by Norman Bridwell
A Very Scary Haunted House by Joanne Barkan
The Berenstain Bears Trick or Treat by Stan & Jan Berenstain
Franklin's Halloween by Paulette Bourgeois
Who Said Boo? by Nancy White Carlstrom
Angelina's Halloween by Katharine Holabird
Baby Looney Tunes Visit a Haunted House by Joseph R. Ritchie
The Teeny Tiny Ghost by Kay Winters
Little Witch's Big Night by Deborah Hautzig
A Very Brave Witch by Alison McGhee
Turtle and Snake's Spooky Halloween by Kate Spohn
Where's Boo? by Salina Yoon
That Terrible Halloween Night by James Stevenson
Sheep Trick or Treat by Nancy Shaw
Halloween by Laura F. Marsh
Five Little Pumpkins by Dan Yaccarino
Halloween by Alice K. Flanagan
Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley
Monster Musical Chairs by Stuart J. Murphy
Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems
Bugs That Go Bump in the Night by David A. Carter
The Three Bears' Halloween by Kathy Duval
Llama Llama Trick or Treat by Anna Dewdney
Pumpkin Eye by Denise Fleming
Ghosts in the House by Kazuno Kohara
Romping Monsters, Stomping Monsters by Jane Yolen
Halloween Night by Marjorie Dennis Murray
The Hallo-wiener by Dav Pilkey
Scary, Scary Halloween by Eve Bunting
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Scaredy Cat, Splat by Rob Scotton
Happy Halloween, Mittens by Lola M. Schaefer
We're Off to Find the Witch's House by Mr. Krieb
The Halloween Kid by Rhode Montijo
Little Goblins Ten by Pamela Jane (this one was like Over in the Meadow and was so cute!)
Queen Halloween by Mary Engelbreit
One Witch by Laura Leuck (great for counting)
Sweets and Treats by Toni Trent Parker
Rules of the House by Mac Barnett
The Little Blue Truck Halloween by Alice Schertle
Pete the Cat Five Little Pumpkins by James Dean
Spooky Pooky by Sandra Boynton
The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle
Mind Your Monsters by Catherine Bailey
Boo, Bunny! by Kathryn O. Galbraith
Seeking a Witch by Angela Diterlizzi
Otter Loves Halloween by Sam Garton
The Spooky Wheels on the Bus by J. Elizabeth Mills
Very cute! I like Elise's NO when you ask if she's going to give the bean bags to Carter.
ReplyDeleteShe's a fiesty one!
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