Halloween School Activities

October 28-30th, 2013

We finally got some use out of our number magnets and used them to make subtraction equations! We used some of the candy we got from our trunk-or-treat as manipulatives. "Seth got eight pieces of candy and ate five. How many were left?"

I also got brave and let the kids help make Halloween sugar cookies. They had a great time cutting them out and decorating them later with their friends.

We also had a lot of fun at our co-op Halloween party! We decorated cookies, sang songs, and wrapped each other up like mummies!

Co-op Sick Day

October 28th, 2013

Our kids came down with a mild case of Hand, Foot & Mouth which we decided not to share with our co-op. Since we were missing a day of learning about plants, we headed outside for a nature scavenger hunt.

We saw lots of great plants, leaves, rocks and bugs, but this was the highlight: we now have TWO Catherine the Wooley Bear Caterpillars. One for each hunter. 

For Halloween I changed up the "Roll a Pumpkin Game" we played last year. Instead of one die, we used two. Seth would have to add the two dice together to find out what to draw. Great addition practice and fun watching Seth's pumpkin get covered with all kids of crazy things. 

I decided to use the white board to help Seth practice reading some of his sight words in context. He's really good at reading them off a list but tends to stumble over a few of them when they're in a sentence. I tried to make it fun for him, but he still doesn't really enjoy reading for school. I'm learning to kind of back off and just give him lots of chances to pick things up on his own. Comic books are great for that (we love Tiny Titans), and we also love the Fly Guy books. 

Pumpkin Math!

October 21st, 2013

We ended up with quite a few pumpkins after our trip to the pumpkin patch, so I thought it would be fun to use them for some school activities. First Seth lined them all up according to size and labeled them 1 through 8. 

Then we filled out a paper for each pumpkin. First he wrote the number, then drew a picture. We used a ruler to measure height, a measuring tape to measure circumference, and a scale to measure weight. 

In retrospect, 8 pumpkins was WAY too many for a little guy. Four would have been just about perfect.

The best part, of course, was carving some of them that night!

Equations and Ghosts

October 15th, 2013

I started introducing Seth to written equations. We would take turns: first, I would tell a story problem using his cars ("There were 5 cars driving and 2 cars crashed. How many cars are left?") and he would write the equation and solve the problem. Then he'd tell me a story and I'd write the equation. He had a lot of fun crashing the cars and got a very basic understanding of how equations work.

And, for a fun Halloween craft we decided to make ghost windsocks out of styrofoam cups and tissue paper. 

BEWARE!

October 2nd, 2013

A nice mix of art & writing for Halloween! We made this signs to hang in our front window (using blood red paint, of course!). Seth had a great time painting ghosts and writing scary messages: 

(I know it's sideways. Blogger is stupid sometimes).

This one says, "Boo! Beware!" I've discovered that Seth is much more agreeable about writing if he can see the purpose behind it. He hates worksheets/books, but he'll write someone a letter or make a sign. So I just have to get creative about his writing projects.