I feel a little silly writing this post considering anything and everything I saw in the stores today screamed Christmas. How is it that Halloween was 3 shorts days ago but it seems so forgotten already? I love Christmas, but give me time to catch up people!
Anyhoo, here are some picture from our last few days of October.
The day before Halloween, I read “Room on the Broom” to my kiddos. “Broom” has always been one of my favorite Halloween read-alouds.
But now it is my MOST FAVORITE READ ALOUD IN THE HISTORY OF MY CAREER AS AN ELEMENTARY TEACHER!!!!!!
You guys, I taught the most perfect lesson with this book on Wednesday. It was nothing extra special…just good old cause and effect. But, every student was engaged.
Every student was engaged.
Even the one who normally picks his cuticles the whole time I’m reading.
Even the one who, when I ask if anyone has any predictions for what might happen next, raises her hand and asks, “Can I get a drink?”
On October 29, 2013 all was perfect in my little classroom for about 23 minutes and 37 seconds.
I am forever indebted to Julia Donaldson and her adorable little rhyming story.
Here’s our anchor chart BEFORE:
And here it is after my totally engaged students helped me fill it out!
The day of Halloween was jam packed with fun, and of course, a parade and a party.
To make room for all the 2nd grade classes to watch a movie in our room, I arranged students’ desks into one large group. This earned me the title “Best Teacher Everrrrrr!!!!!” It's the little things.
We did the book character costume thing in our hallway this year. I was Fern and my grade partners were Pinkalicious and Junie B. Jones.
My awesome room mom organized a few fun spider crafts. Blow-Pops, Oreos, and spiders. You can’t go wrong.
We also played a Halloween game from Christina Bainbridge. The kids loved it because it involved candy. I love it because it involved math. And also because there was leftover candy.
Our day was so jam-packed that we didn’t get to half of what I wanted to, including Halloween centers and a few more read-alouds.
Hence, Friday was crowned “Halloween Take Two”. That’s right, we rang in November with candy corn, costumes, and witches brew!
We spent our morning rotating around spooky centers. This was a big deal for them because I do not do centers this way in my room. The rotation thing was a little overwhelming at first but I was really happy with how quickly they settled into it.
My
Costume Clues center was a big hit!!!
So were Katie King’s “Costume Capers”
Students also played math games and did spooky reading, where they read with the lights turned off while listening to spooky symphonies on Pandora.
We ended the day by making witches brew together. I pulled elements from my
Witches’ Brew unit but when push came to shove, we didn’t have a lot of time for many of the activities in the unit. Darn it. There’s always next year!
I whipped up a condensed version though, that I plan on adding to the unit soon.
First, students buddy read the witches’ brew poem that I wrote.
Then, they used the poem to write the recipe for witches’ brew. Once their recipe was approved by me they were allowed to make their brew.
After they were finished making their witches’ brew, students came up with their own recipes while munching on their brew.
It was a really fun way to end our week and keep the craziness at bay the day after Halloween. It was a little different than doing the whole she-bang like we usually do…you know, teachers dressed up as witches, talking in our terrible witch voices with fake rats and spiders. I felt bad that my class this year missed out on that experience but I think the scaled down version was appropriate for the day after Halloween while still being tons of fun for them!
Plus, this here teacher is still dog tired, ya’ll.
I hope everyone had a fabulous Halloween and a restful weekend! We only have school 3 days this week due to our state’s teacher convention so that’s what’s getting me through!
Have a good night!
Halle
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