Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Michelle's Corner: Halloween Fun That Teaches Too!

Halloween is one of my favorite times of year to teach preschoolers!  Here are a few of the things we are doing this week in my classroom to learn and celebrate the upcoming holiday.

My sensory table has shredded black and orange construction paper with holiday themed erasers and spiders hiding inside.  Students search through the paper for the hidden items and collect them in black cauldrons.  When they have found all they want to they put the items back in the table and hide them for someone else to find.  This is always a popular center!

I wanted a project that would help decorate our room for Halloween, but also reinforce shapes.  This project did just that!  Not only did students learn about shapes, but they developed scissor skills by cutting the shapes out and they practiced their writing skills by writing "Boo!" on the ghost.

Here are the supplies ready to go!  I used the Learning Resources Relational Shape Templates to trace the large shapes that student's cut out and then I used them to cut out smaller shapes for students to glue on.  I love these templates and use them all the time for various projects.  It's so nice to have a variety of sizes and shapes at my fingertips when creating projects!

Here are some of our finished products hanging up!  



Another popular center this week has been our bat counting.  Students count and place the correct number of bats in each bat cave.

I'll end this post with one of my favorite quotes by Mr. Fred Rogers:  "Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning.  But for children play is serious learning.  Play is really the work of childhood."