Thursday, November 10, 2011

Pumpkins and Halloween!

The week before Halloween was all about pumpkins! :) We went to a Pumpkin Patch for a study trip, and the kids had a blast! The kids got to pick out a pumpkin to take home so we used that pumpkin for fun measurement with their book buddies. They weighed it, measured its circumference and counted the lines on it.

We started off talking about pumpkins by coming up with words to describe them (reviewing adjectives. I used a few activities from Deanna Jump's Halloween unit for this. We made a web of adjectives to describe pumpkins and then we used these adjectives to make our own pumpkin poems.



We also did a cute class book from Deanna's unit about what we will be for Halloween. It turned out ADORABLE! :)



We did a fun pumpkin writing activity where the kids got to create their own pumpkin characters and write about what they would do. I got it from Made For First Grade's Pumpkin unit.

In math, we did a simple pumpkin seed book activity, but added in number sentences to show how many pumpkin seeds were in the pumpkin. (Honestly can't remember who I downloaded this from so if it is your book, let me know so I can credit you. I follow too many blogs!! )




Since we were working on addition and subtraction, we also did a fun Halloween Doubles book to practice our doubles facts. (Once again, forgot who I downloaded this from. Let me know if it's yours! The kids loved it!!)


We also did fun pumpkin and halloween word problems. Here are a few examples:



We read a lot of fun pumpkin books including Sixteen Runaway Pumpkins by Diane Ochiltree and my all-time favorite The Ugly Pumpkin by Dave Horowitz. We then wrote about the book in our reading journals focusing on the problem and solution in the story. The Inspired Apple blog has a post on other fun activities to do with this great book! :)


On Halloween (I think Halloween on a Monday should be illegal by the way! haha) we did lots of fun Halloween activities, most of which I got from Rachelle's Halloween unit.

From her unit we read her adorable, Green Witch Green Witch book and the kids got to color and fill in their own book. They also did a Halloween word search, solved secret Halloween messages and drew themselves trick-or-treating.



We also did several fun art projects. The kids got to paint pumpkins and then use black construction paper to create the face. They turned out ADORABLE! :)




We did a writing/art project where we read Where's My Mummy? and wrote about what our moms do for us when we are scared. The kids also made their own mummy masks out of paper plates. SO ADORABLE! :)


Our final art project was also from Rachelle's unit. We made skeletons out of q-tips!


Hope you enjoyed our Halloween fun! Coming soon...Inventors! :)





4 comments:

Stinkerbell said...

I don't know how you find the time to do all these fun, but educational things! You are amazing. :)

Delighted said...

Looks like you have been busy! Fun! Fun! Fun! Don't you just just the Where's my Mummy book?

First Grade Delight

Jill Johnson Andrews said...

I am so excited about this unit! I can't wait to be teaching with such fantastic teachers like you again. So impressed. I posted your blog to my blog. Would love you to see mine. jillja.blogspot.com

See you soon!

Heather said...

These are great ideas. Just what I was looking for! Thanks!