October - A time of daydreaming, imagination, a trip to the Farmstead and Halloween!

We took our first field trip to The Farmstead in Meridian.  We rode a hay wagon, picked pumpkins, rode a cow train, jumped on a giant inflatable pillow and "swam" through the corn bin.  Often the best kind of learning happens when you think you're "just having fun"!

We continued learning our letters and their sounds.  We learned Ee is

 for elephant and engine (we built fire engines from our snack foods).  We also discovered that Ee can say it's real name as in the word eagle!  We talked about how important Aa and Ee are because they are vowels and there's a vowel in every word we read! 

We learned Ff is for fall and fish and Gg is for ghost and gumballs and H is for Halloween and hippo and Jj is for jack-o-lantern!  We began singing songs about our numbers 0-10.  We use the DVD "Jumpin Numbers and Shakin Shapes" by Heidi Songs!  This helps the children to hear, see and move their bodies in association with the numbers. Click this link if you would like to see a sample https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=jumpin+numbers+and+shakin+shapes+number+8   

We do a lot of singing in our school.  We turn on "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" when it's time to clean up a project and move to another activity.  By the second or third week of school they only had to hear a few notes before they would all say "It's chicka, chicka, hurry clean up!"  We also sang songs and chants like "Baby fish, do do do do do do, baby fish do do do do do do, baby fish do do do do do do baby fish.  Mama fish....."  They sang "Five little ducks" when we were working on the letter D.  They sang "The Autumn Song" from Scholastic's Calendar Time and Flip Chart.  https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=jumpin+numbers+and+shakin+shapes+number+8  The lyrics are sung to the tune of "London Bridges"   Windy Breezes blow around, blow around, blow around, Windy breezes blow around in the autumn.  Autumn leaves come tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down.  Autumn leaves come tumbling down On the ground.  Take a rake and pile them up, pile them up, pile them up.  Take a rake and pile them up And jump right in!"  They loved dancing and moving to this music as they learned that Autumn and Fall are two words to describe the same thing.  Their favorite songs during October were "I'm a mean old Witch" and "Five little pumpkins".  

We read several books about using our imagination like "Quick as a Cricket"   And "Where the Wild Things Are"    We also read "It's Not a Box" and then followed up with our own "imagination boxes".  

Of course we finished up the month with a Halloween party!  The kids wore their costumes and we played bowling for ghosts, Halloween bingo and ate spooky treats!