Halloween and a review week

Halloween was on a Wednesday this year.  This year, I decided to have the children dress up after Halloween was over.  I know how expensive Halloween costumes can be and I didn't want their costumes getting wrecked at preschool.  The hype of Halloween was over when we dressed up.  I hope they were excited about dressing up again, but in a way I think that maybe it was a "been there - done that" type of experience.

When I went shopping for cookies for our Halloween party, I did it Tuesday night (the night before Halloween) and there was nothing left!  I was going to put them in the refrigerator.  I bought autumn cookies instead and put Peeps Jack-O-Lantern marshmallows on top.

On Monday and Tuesday, the children dressed up in the costumes that I have - nurse, surgeons, doctor, train conductor, and a cowhand.  On Wednesday and Thursday they dug through my sensory boxes to find Halloween type treasures.  One box had beans in it and the other had rice in it.  On Friday they played a capital and lower case letter match game to earn candy.  The Friday morning group got to feel the slime that I made.  It was super gross and took forever to wash off.  For the afternoon group, since they are all pre-kers, I decided to carve the top off of the pumpkin and have them scoop the seeds out.  They did a great job!!  While they played together, I roasted the seeds, and sent them home with the children.

For art, on Monday and Tuesday, the children had to peel the backing off of Jack-O-Lantern stickers and put them on a pumpkin cutout.  On Wednesday, the children made little Jack-O-Lantern magnets.  They picked out and arranged the tiny face pieces on the pumpkin and I glued them down.  On Thursday and Friday, I sent home a sticker Halloween puppet on a stick craft.  On Thursday and Friday, they spent a lot of time socializing and playing.

For review - we went over the letters and letter sounds and did writing centers which consisted of building letters with play-do, building letters with wooden pieces, and tracing the letters in salt.

There are A LOT of pictures.  I'm going to just throw them onto this blog and not sort them, like I have been doing.  Enjoy!

They're riding a "broom" horse ;)

Acting out one Halloween song

"All aboard!!"

Guess who this is?  This was taken on Halloween night.  I used this carved pumpkin or "Jack-O-Lantern" in our pictures and songs.

They wanted to help carry it to put it away, but there was a little accident.  Opps!

I wanted to act out my part - but I didn't want to scare my students, so I held back - I'm holding onto my hands so I didn't do something crazy.

I wish I captured the moment that they were pulling the seeds out, but I forgot.  It's best that way, because then I'd get pumpkin guts onto my camera.  Here's the seeds ready to get roasted.  If any of you have a great recipe on roasting pumpkin seeds, let me know.  I followed instructions off of the internet and they tasted overdone.

Darth Vader asked me to take a picture of his tower.  He's so proud of it!