Halloween Day 2012 - Preschool

Welcome Halloween!  What a crazy busy week filled with parties and costumes galore!  Kids were welcome to come to preschool in their costumes for Halloween day.

 Everyone got a glow bracelet to play with in our spooky "Haunted Houses" (aka: pop-up tents and tunnels).

 It was so much fun!

 How many kids can fit in a pop-up tent?  At least 5!

 Spooky Snack time.

 We had a spider pinata with a few mint candies for each kid.

 Hit that spider!

 The dance party with the parents was great exercise for everyone!

 Painting handprints and footprints is very tickly!

 Preschool B did a little bit of pattern review on the SMART board.

 And then we played with pattern blocks to introduce our new math unit about 2D shapes.

 We built some really cool things.

 Together these two made a car and then decided that the tires looked like eyes of the big green monster and made that instead!

 We made shape pictures on our haunted houses.

 Snack time was spooky with the dry ice and spooky treats that the moms all brought, thanks moms!

Halloween! - Tot School Tuesday

Today we had our Halloween party in tot school.  We had a lot of fun starting out at the SMART Board making Jack-O-Lanterns on Starfall.com.

 There is a great app for the iPad of the book "Go Away Big Green Monster".  I highly recommend it.

 Snack time was delicious!

 Look!  Frosting!

 Lacing a Halloween plate.

 Trick-or-treat!

 We made squishy bags full of hair gel and Halloween erasers.

 This is VB's VERY happy face!

 Coloring our haunted house books.

 Playing a color matching game in the Halloween Tot Pack.

 I have an old cauldron from the days when my father owned a bakery.  Every year we add some dry ice and watch the kids have fun!

 We made handprint and footprint ghosts with our parents before the end of the day.  So much fun!

Preschool A - Halloween Monday 10-29

Over the weekend we went three different places to enjoy the Halloween activities as a family.  Come Monday morning I couldn't find my camera anywhere!  I did have my video camera.  Though I don't have any still photos, here is a rare glimps into the happenings of a preschool day.

Preschool B - Monday 10/29

Preschool B strayed from it's regular route today.  We had a few Halloween activities around the room and we focused on a key reading strategies lesson and finishing our math unit.

 We sifted erasers out of rice and dressed up in costumes.

 A reading strategy is a plan for what to do if you get to a word you don't know in a book.  There are a few different strategy charts out there and each Preschool B child got a bookmark of the following in their reading bag to reference.  I'd encourage parents to utilize it when their child is reading to them.  If they don't know a word ask them, "What strategy are you going to use to figure it out?"  Pull out the bookmark and have them figure out what they're going to do instead of doing it for them.

 One of the strategies that I really like from the set below that isn't included in the set above is "Point at the word your voice is saying".  Don't forget to encourage that at home!

 Vegetables and hummus, yummy!

 We finished our math unit today and you should have seen their wrap up page of concepts in their backpacks with a big star on the top - they all did great!  We're going to review 2D shapes in November and have a lot of fun talking about their different attributes next.