Happy November! Looking Back on Halloween...

So much fun stuff, so little time! I have been having a BLAST with my sweet kindergarteners this year! Can y'all believe it's already NOVEMBER?? I wanted to share some of the things we've been up to in October...

I tried to describe our kindergarten building's really cool common area in my last post, but there's just no way to describe it...here is one angle. All 3 kindergarten classes added spiders and bats to create a SPOOKY Halloween theme! LOVED the "Spooktacular Work" bulletin board set that our teammate ordered this year. It really tied everything together along with the black cob webs! :o) I believe the bats complete with one fact each "I learned that bats..." and the cute spiders came from Deanna Jump's units.

A mom from my classroom brought in the Frankenstein cardboard piece below that has a cut out where the head would be. Each student could peek thru that cut out or the witch version, and the teachers took pictures of all the students. They turned out so cute! 

Here's the witch art project one of the other classes did. Too cute! I think their very talented teacher assistant came up with the design...I believe they added a glittery wart to each nose. Love it! :o)

Here is our other kindergarten teacher's door. She had her inspiration from Pinterest, back when Pinterest was just getting started and does this every year. I'm a little jealous because my door opens outward and I can't do this to my door!! Maybe I can figure out a way to create the Frankenstein version that's floating around out there somewhere...either way, doesn't this just make you smile?!

This is just outside my classroom in the "foyer" as we like to call it. My students and I graphed about if bats are creepy or not before diving into our Going Batty unit. You can also see our pumpkins we carved after pumpkin math...and you can see that most of us think bats are creepy...

We made a very very very yummy witches brew together. There were 13 ingredients...and because one student happened to be absent that day, everyone was able to add in exactly one ingredient to our brew! I bought a $1 cauldron at Target, brought my wooden spoon, put my witch hat on, and turned down the lights. They had a blast! (and so did I!).

There is a freebie for the poem, ingredient list, and ingredient bag labels:

CLICK HERE to go to her TPT store and download your copy.

Then in the art center that week, each student made their witch's feet and cauldron. Under the cauldron flap is a spider, bat, or jack-o-lantern (the students chose what they wanted in their brew!). Here are some more cute spiders and the first of our witches brew art project. 

I'm really annoyed with this...I ALWAYS want to give credit where credit is due..but I cannot find the teacher's blog or TPT where these patterns came from. My teacher assistant created and modified this for us, but it was directly based on someone else's adorable project. If you are reading this and you know where this came from, please leave a comment below or email me!! 

Back to our bats...we kept some of our bat facts in our classroom to decorate and remind us of what we learned.

Feeling inspired, I created a schema anchor chart for day #1 of our bat chats. I introduced the word "schema" (told them it was a very important college word...they were so proud of themselves for remembering what it meant!), and we also learned what a "misconception" is. They were excited to find new bat facts to put into our "new learning" box. Even after I took this picture, we found more interesting facts about bats!

Our little man was a sock monkey for Halloween! He walked around saying "oooh oooh ahhhh ahhhh" in his monkey suit. I could just eat him up!!!

And a big congratulations to my dear friend Joelle and her fiance Michael. We celebrated their engagement this weekend and had so much fun! We wish y'all the very best and are always here for you!! :o)

Okay, I promise this is my last little side note...handsome and I have made a music choice change. Our once country music-rich household with a little bit of rap/hip-hop mixed in (I HAD to listen to the Weekend Blast Off on the Ace and TJ show every Friday just to be able to sing along with Ice Ice Baby, Run DMC's Tricky...really, you name it, I was boppin' my head to it)....we have decided to listen exclusively to praise and worship music. Our pastor's quote from last month was "Turn the crap off and the worship up" ...and I cannot say enough about how it has already started changing little things in my life. Right now my favorite song is One Thing Remains... so I'll leave y'all with this...it makes my heart smile! :o)

...be at peace, and all will be well...