Pumpkins, dress up and ghosts....oh my!

October's theme was CREATIVITY and we got very creative this month.  We played dress up, took our first fieldtrip to the Farmstead, learned about a really brave man, Christopher Columbus, had a Halloween party and got really comfortable with one another and the preschool routine.

In Phonics we learned:
        F is for fan, fall and fish
        G is for goat, ghost,
        H is for Halloween, hand and harvest
        I is for inchworm and igloo
        J is for Jack-a-lantern and jam, 
        S is for spider and sun

In math we added pages to our counting books for 7-11.  Our books include writing the number, coloring objects or gluing objects to the page and seeing the number word.  We started doing some simple addition while playing the apple game and the ladybug game.  We sorted and graphed halloween candy.  We played a game where they searched the school room for the numbers 1-8 on the walls and ran to the correct number that was called out.

We learned the songs "Monster day", "I'm a mean old witch", "Five little pumpkins", and "The Itsy, bitsy spider".

We read the books "The Falling leaves and the Scarecrow", "Fall brings", "Going on a Ghost Hunt", "Strega Nona's Harvest", "When the Leaf blew in", "Alpha Oops", "H is for Halloween", "Pick a pumpkin, Mrs. Milly", "The Little Old Lady who wasn't afraid of anything", "The Magic School Bus in the Bat Cave",  "Pick a perfect Pumpkin", "The Best Halloween Hunt Ever", "Scaredycrow" and a few books about imaginative like "Harold and the Purple Crayon", "Quick as a Cricket", "Higher, Higher" and "Not a box".  Reading aloud gives the children opportunities to predict what will happen, to listen for comprehension and to discuss the story lines and characters.  I often ask "What would you do if you were (a certain character)?"

In art we made Fall wreaths, ghosts, a "Fall Brings" booklet, a table top Christopher Columbus (along with reading a book about Columbus), a haunted house, spider hats, and Halloween macaroni necklaces.