Spiders, Halloween and Exploring Fun!

We learned that a spider has a head, an abdomen and eight legs. Spiders are hard workers and build beautiful webs where they catch bugs and flies for their food. The children used a small oval for their spider's head, a large oval for the abdomen and guess how we made the legs? We used both hands in opposition to carefully tear strips of construction paper to make the legs. It was a little tricky at first, but once we had our pincher fingers in place we tore away! As we practiced using little dots of glue to attach our legs to the abdomen, we counted to make sure our spiders had their eight legs.

     Making Halloween scenes with peel and stick foam jack-o-lanterns, bats, fall leaves and trick or treat masks was lots of fun. The children used white crayons and colored pencils to draw fences, moons, spiders and so much more on their black paper. We used our fine motor skills to peel the backing from the stickers before adding them to our scenes. Then each child used their picture to dictate a story to the teacher.

     We discovered corn cob in the sensory table this week. Wooden spoons and of course our hands were used to transfer the wonderful corn cob into tiny jack-o-lanterns and wooden bowls and baskets. There were even some bats and spiders lurking around in there!  
      That is not the only place we found bats and spiders this week. They were also buried deep in this ooey, gooey, slimy stuff called GAK! Wow, it was lots of fun to stretch it and hold it up high and watch it glop, glop, glop down into our tray!

                       Building with "brillo blocks" is so much fun! That is until the tractor trailer had a crash. Fortunately, no one was hurt and there was only minor damage to the tractor. Once the flat tires were fixed we were all set to go!

 

A very special mystery reader visited us this week in the library. The little ladybugs have become really good at listening to the clues and making predictions as to who the mystery reader might be.This week we enjoyed "Bats at the Beach" by Brian Lies. At night the bats came out of their daytime hiding places with their beach bags full of towels, picnic baskets and even moon-tan lotion and headed for the beach! 

 

Under the pumpkin and candy corn lights the children danced and sang Halloween songs with Mrs. McIvor during Exploring. They also enjoyed bean bag toss, and dressing "Chicken Macnugget" Halloween characters into costumes and letting them play in the big house.

 

What a challenge the children faced as they carefully attempted to walk through the spider web that they discovered in Mrs. Mundell's classroom. They did amazingly well, trying not to get tangled up in the web! Some of us even tried moving our bodies like a snake, underneath the web crawling from one end of the web to the other.

Another exciting activity in Exploring this week was making "rock and roll bats." We dipped golf balls into different colors of paint and then placed it in the tub with our bat. Then we turned the tub in all directions as the ball rolled over our bat making it very colorful. Next we sprinkled sparkly glitter on top, making some really cool bats! 

But that is not all..... for snack the children watched as Mrs. Samuel used the blender to make a very special "ghost milk" using orange sherbert, vanilla ice cream and milk! We had orange and black Halloween Oreos too, and it was oh so yummy!!

This week we discussed the difference in fiction and non-fiction books. We learned that fiction is an imaginary story and that non-fiction is a true book that tells us important things. We read the non-fiction book, "Bats Are Night Animals" by Joanne Mattern. In the library some of us visited the non-fiction section and found books about topics such as trains and animals.

Some of the other books that we read this week are:
"Pumpkin Eye" by Denise Fleming
"Zoom Broom" by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
"The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle
""Hide and Squeak" by Heather Frederick

HELP!! Please don't forget that we need oatmeal, coffee and "Pringle" containers (or any container like that) for Exploring on November 4th. The children will be making drums, and so far we only have a few!