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"There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million." -Walter Streightiff

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Pumpkin Patch

Some of our absolutely favorite books were shared this week. We read them over and over again and sat and read them to each other and on our own.

Some of us grew pumpkins in our gardens at home but nobody claimed growing a pumpkin as big as the one in Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman
or as many pumpkins as in Too Many Pumpkins by Linda Williams.
 We loved acting out the parts in The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything, by the same author. 
 
Other favorites- Shake Dem Halloween Bones, The Spooky Old Tree, Ten Timid Ghosts and Inside a Haunted House that is Haunted.
We played with big pumpkins and little pumpkins, real pumpkins and pretend ones. We used tongs to transfer them from bucket to bowl. We weighed them and measured them. We used the words big and little and heavy and light to compare sizes. We mixed them up to make pumpkin stew and other Halloween concoctions.


We had some fun manipulatives like halloween erasers, spiders, stretchy skeletons and glow in the dark bats that we used for lots of pretend play. We were limited only by our imaginations!
"Emoti-Pumpkins" were hanging on the door. Each had a face which showed a particular emotion- angry, sad, happy, surprised, scared, etc. We threw a jack-o-lantern bean bag at them and acted out the emotion portrayed by the face. 
We chanted a finger play about five little pumpkins:
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate(hold up five fingers)
The first one said, “Oh my it’s getting late (point to wrist)
The second one said, “ There’s magic in the air! (point upwards)
The third one said, “I don’t care.” (shrug shoulders)
The fourth one said, “Let’s run and run and run.” (move legs as in running)
The fifth one said, “Let’s go have some fun! (wave)
Wooooo! Went the wind, out went the light! (clap hands)
Five little pumpkins rolled out of sight! (roll arms)

To the tune of "Ten Little Indians", we sang"
One little, two little, three little witches,
Flying over haystacks, flying over ditches.
Riding on moonbeams without any hitches,
Hi ho, Halloween's here!

 “Hocus Pocus” was a favorite game of the week. We had a magic wand and we turned the others into Halloween creatures. We chanted:
"Hocus Pocus Alakazam, turn into a _____________ if you can! POOF!"
We had to dramatize that creature and then when we were done, we chanted: "Hocus Pocus Alakazoo, now turn back into you! POOF! "
A Halloween rendition of "Ring Around the Rosy" was-
Ring around the witch's brew
A cauldron full of pumpkin stew
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!
We each chose a pumpkin to investigate. We weighed it, measured it, described it and predicted whether it would sink or float. We cut our pumpkins in half and scooped out the seeds and described how it felt inside. Next, we used the pumpkins for printing. We dipped them in a variety of colors and printed them on paper. There was some really vibrant language that came out of this super sensory activity from start to finish. 
A great manipulative activity with our pumpkins was to pound golf tees into them. It took a lot of eye hand coordination and strength in our hands and wrists to pound the tees in and also to pull them back out again. 
 We had loads of fun on the Trick or Treat Trail.
The animals of the forest were so kind to us and gave us plenty of treats.

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