October - A time for imagination and creativity

  As the weather cooled and fall set in, it was the perfect setting for celebrating Halloween and visiting the local pumpkin patch.  We went to The Farmstead in Meridian near the end of the month.  It was our first field trip and the kids did beautifully.  I'm lucky that so many parents wanted to come along that day too.  See some of the pictures below:

 This is both the morning and afternoon classes combined.

 Just chillin on the hay wagon after picking pumpkins.

 Riding the cow train and playing in the old west town.

 They made it through the straw maze as a team!

In addition to the field trip we were getting ready for Halloween.  We played Dress UP!

And put on puppet shows!

We made some spooky ghosts!

And some spooky treats to eat.  Our spiders were made with Ritz crackers, peanut butter to hold them together, pretzel sticks and jelly beans for eyes.

Our jack-o-lantern masks were made with flour tortillas, butter and cinnamon sugar and then broiled.

Even with all this fun we learned 5 new letters!

E is for Elephant.  

F is for Fall. We painted beautiful fall leaves, jumped in real ones and went on a nature walk to see signs of the season.  We read the book "Harold's Purple Crayon" and talked about imagination.

G is for Ghost and goats.  We read the book "The Three Billy Goats Gruff".  We "discovered" hidden letter G's when we used magic paint to uncover them.

H is for Halloween.  We made our own shape monsters this week, read the book "Quick as a Cricket" by Don and Audrey Wood and learned to sing one of their favorite songs of the year.  The words are "I'm a mean old witch with a hat, and I ride on my broomstick with my cat and my face is wrinkled and my hands are too and you better watch out or I might scare youuuuuuuuuuuuu"

J is for Jack-o-lantern.  We read "The Little Old Lady Who wasn't afraid of anything", "The Dot" (another book about seeing things in a new way) and "Pumpkin Eye".  We had a Halloween party and added some new sight words to our vocabulary.  I try to have the kids see sight words in as many ways as possible.  Here they are "getting the feel" of the word by using play dough to cover a laminated card with some of our sight words.

It was a full month of discovery, learning and fun!