Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts

Friday, November 1, 2013

Wrapping Up Halloween!

Halloween is finally behind us!  My boys were so excited and distracted in the days leading up to it that it was tough to keep them on task.  I'm glad I had planned a relatively light workload for the week!  We've wrapped up our Halloween activities, and will be continuing with our farm and autumn themes.


As he has been doing all month, Colby completed an activity from "Halloween Math Art Activities in Printable Worksheets" each day.  (More about this great packet in this post.)


We worked with these fantastic "What's Missing?" alphabet cards from Rakin' in the Learning. (More about this fantastic packet, which we will be using throughout November, can be found here.)


This activity is actually meant to be used with a recording sheet, but with only one student using the cards we were able to simply laminate them and write directly on them with a dry-erase marker!  There are 18 cards; Colby worked very hard at this, and he did great.


He practiced his counting with these fantastic spider mats and cards from "Spiders!  Interactive Playdough Mats, Counting Centers and Games, and Printables".  (We featured other activities from this packet in this post.)


Cute, right?  I wish I'd gotten more pictures of our spider activities, but it was such a busy day.


Here's my little guy working with our autumn-themed ten frames.


I'm obsessed with ten- and twenty-frames lately!  


This activity, which I created myself (with invaluable input from my two little monkeys), consists of ten-frames, a set of cards with the numbers 1-10, a set with the numbers represented with dice, and a third set with tally marks.


Here's a closer look.  If you'd like a copy of this activity, you can download it here (the ten frames and card sets are separate downloads; make sure you get them both!):


We hope you find them useful! 


The terrific Halloween write-the-room that Colby is working on so intently is a freebie from MrsPayton!


As I always do, I hid the cards throughout our classroom and Colby hunted for them, then wrote the words on the recording sheet.  If you'd like a copy of this free activity, you can find it here:


This recording sheet, and the super cute cards below, are from Rita Mitchell's "Farm Write the Room: Interactive Writing Activity".  This is actually only part of it - there's so much included that I have it split up into several days' worth of activities!  


There are different recording sheets included, so you can choose the option that works best for you.  I love Rita Mitchell's write-the-room activities, and you just can't beat the price.  This one is only $1.50!  (Remember, only a fraction of the product is shown here!  It's a fantastic deal.)


These farm animal count-and-clip cards are yet another awesome freebie from Teaching With Nancy.  I have a pretty extensive collection of her products, both free and purchased, and I love every single one.


You can find this freebie here: Farm Animal Count and Clip Cards (1-12), and I highly recommend checking out the rest of her store while you're at it!



We read a lot of Halloween and Autumn books this week; when I asked Colby which one I should feature in our blog post, he chose "Pumpkin Soup" by Helen Cooper.


The illustrations are fantastic, and the story is a good reminder that some things are more important than getting your own way.


This "10 Little Chickies" book is part of this On the Farm Educational Unit from Learn and Grow Designs.  I got this product as part of a massive Teachers Notebook fundraiser for the tornado victims of Moore, Oklahoma.  Along with many, many other TN sellers, Learn and Grow Designs donated their hard work to raise money for people in need.  I encourage you to visit their shop and show some love!


Colby used finger paint to make the correct number of fingerprint chicks on each page.  


When they were dry, he added legs, beaks, and eyes with fine-point markers.


Then I cut out the pages and stapled them together.  The finished product is adorable!

For more ideas and links to freebies, try my Pinterest boards:


Shops and blogs mentioned in this post:


If you enjoy our Autumn Themed Ten Frames, please consider following our blog, or leaving a comment!  We'd love to hear from you!

Halloween and Learning the Continents


Time to catch up with Hunter and check out some of the fun freebies we've used this week!


Isn't this Halloween story mobile adorable?  (It's all colored in, but he colored so lightly that a lot of it just doesn't show up!)  The book Hunter chose for his mobile is "Big Pumpkin" by Erica Silverman.  It's been his favorite Halloween book since he was four years old!  You can get a FREE copy of the templates to make this mobile from Jennifer Dowell right here.


Hunter is working on learning the names of the continents and oceans.  This file folder game is a great way to practice.  There are two versions available; one in color, and one in black and white.  To save ink, I printed the black and white version and colored it myself.


Both versions are FREE!  You can find it here:


He also completed this cut-and-paste activity from Discovering Homeschool's CurrClick store.  Get a copy here: Continents Cut and Paste.  It's free!


We've done a lot of activities with these FREE Continents Nomenclature Cards from the Helpful Garden.




Talk about perfect timing!  I was absolutely thrilled to find this FREE Haunted Earth Craftivity in Teacher Chick's TpT store.


Hunter colored the map and the Halloween characters, then used the key to paste the characters on the correct ocean or continent.  We mounted it all on black construction paper and hung it on the wall.  It came out great!


Finally, he completed this super cute mini-book.  It goes over the seven continents and five oceans.


It's a 15-page freebie by Karmen!


You can download your FREE copy here:

You can find a lot more ideas and freebies on these Pinterest boards:


Shops and Blogs mentioned in this post:


Thanks for stopping by!  

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Kindergarten Halloween, Autumn, & Farm Activities

From now until Thanksgiving, Colban will have Autumn and Farm themed activities in addition to his regular work, and also Halloween activities until the end of this month.  Here are some of the highlights from the past week: 


I love this pumpkin freebie from Kay Sommer!  There are lots of options for differentiating this activity, but we just stuck with the simplest option - counting to 10.  Colby traced the numbers on the strips, then we cut them apart, fastened them at each end with brads, added the leaf and a bit of curly green ribbon, and . . .


. . . ta-da!  A beautiful little 3-d counting pumpkin!


Colby is quite pleased with it, and I love how it looks in the classroom.  Here's where you can grab a copy of this fabulous freebie: Let's Count on a Pumpkin! {FREE}


We also had a lot of fun with this Ten Little Ghosts Number Order Freebie by Crayons and Curls.


We cut out the ghosts, and Colby glued them in the correct order on a sentence strip.


There was one blank ghost, so Colby wrote his name on it and stuck it on the bottom :-).


He did more cut-and-paste addition problems from this activity packet (more about this in the previous post - check it out!)


This FREE farm animal graphing activity is from Teaching With Nancy.  There are 3 different farm animal data maps and corresponding recording sheets included!  (The data sheets are actually 8.5" x 11" - I printed them out half size to save ink, which I never seem to have enough of!)


Here's a closer look at the recording sheet . . .


. . .  and the data mat.  Colby will be completing the other two in the coming weeks.


This super-cute Spooky Ten Frame Write the Room activity is by Marsha McGuire.  There are two sets of cards and two recording sheets - one for numbers 1-10, and the other for numbers 11-20.  We did them both, on different days.  Colby loves it when I hide the cards around our classroom like Easter eggs.


He finds them all and brings them back to his seat to complete the activity.


Another great freebie from Teaching With Nancy!  You can get a set of these farm themed count-and-clip cards here: Farm: 0-10 Counting Clip Circles.  (I took lots of pictures of Colby using these, but for some reason they all came out blurry.)


Here's our craftivity for the Letter I!  To make the icicles, Colby squeezed a lot of Elmer's glue onto the paper, and then we tipped the paper upright just enough for the glue to start running down.  When Colby was satisfied that the drips looked like icicles, he added silver glitter.  When it dried, he finished off the wintry look with sparkly snowflake stickers.


This batty rhyming activity is a freebie from Can Do Kinders!  Colby sorted the bats with rhyming pictures on their wings onto one mat, and the ones that didn't rhyme onto another.  This was actually a little trickier for him than I expected!  We'll just have to keep practicing.


You can download a copy of this free activity HERE.


I wish I'd printed off these free alphabet pattern block cards sooner!  Colban just doesn't get sick of them, and they're an excellent way to practice letter formation.


You can download these HERE, from Confessions of a Homeschooler.


How cute is this interactive song book from Sprinkles to Kindergarten?!


As we read the poem "5 Little Pumpkins" and as Colby turns the pages, he gets to see the pumpkins disappear one by one!


He loves to lay on the carpet and flip through it again and again.  You can get a copy here:


For this Beginning Sounds Matching activity from Fall Fun: Math and Literacy Activities by KinderKids, Colban matched the pictures on the bales of hay to the appropriate letter scarecrows.  


He completed the recording sheets, and of course, he had to color them!  This packet has 5 different autumn themed activities, and like everything in the KinderKids TpT store, it costs only $1!


Colby used these beautiful harvest themed alphabet cards from Rakin' in the Learning (more about this in the previous post) to match upper- and lowercase letters.  


We read ABCs of Halloween by Patricia Reeder Eubank.  Aren't the illustrations just beautiful?  

For more ideas and links to great freebies, try these Pinterest boards:


Blogs and TpT Stores mentioned in this post: