October

In October I work with my younger kids using the theme of Halloween and Autumn.  This is such a fun month.

We decorated the house and enjoyed "discovering” the funny and the spooky.

The beginning of the month still let us outdoors without coats on; maybe a sweatshirt during morning hours.  It still felt good to put your bare feet in the sand.

 

We discovered outdoors the last fruits and flowers of our labors for this year.

Along with stories we learned and recited many autumn and Halloween finger plays concerning skeletons, bats, pumpkins, ghosts and apples.  Nathan learned to say “BOO!”

We got out some fun Halloween music to move and dance to with ribbons.  Of course the kitten couldn’t resist this activity.  Halloween stories were fun to listen to on tape, as well.

   

Kaitlyn began writing in earnest this month.  Her letters just started flowing out on paper and she is picking out beginning sounds and ending sounds to correctly identify their letters in all sorts of words.   She is trying hard to read!

Painting was a big hit.  Don’t worry!  Crayola is non toxic AND washable.

Nathan enjoyed working on the nesting and stacking cups.

In October we play dress up, use our imaginations and dream about the things we might be when we grow up someday.  This play also helps us with the practical everyday matter of dressing and undressing ourselves.

We talk about feelings in the month of October.  We read books about feelings and made the faces associated with those feelings like:

Happy and…………………………………………………………….Surprised

 

Angry ………………………………………. And sad… as we learned to say goodbye all over again this month.

We covered geography AND science by learning body parts….. perfect for the month of Halloween.

Elbows                                       Ears

Tongues                                   Toes

Teeth……. just to name a few that Nathan is learning.  Kaitlyn is reading about and learning about skeletons, arteries and veins, lungs, muscles and hearts.

We made silly faces with our potato heads to help learn about body parts.

Nathan really got into this activity and we had a good laugh at some of these taters.

We reserved the potato head glasses for our own funny faces!  I remember sticking these on my cat, Ginger, as a child.  These glasses are never for the potato head.

We make funny face pictures using old magazines, scissors and glue and continue work on Kaitlyn’s alphabet book as well.  Here she is gluing in ribbon and writing the letter R.  The ribbon is special since it came on a package from the “stitch fairy”, the likes of which I didn’t know existed until this month.

Of course we baked and ate Ghost Cupcakes!  YUMMY!

Nathan and Kaitlyn really get into the chocolate buttercream frosting.  More silly faces!

As we learn about the calendar; month, date, year and season and sing our days of the week song we count down to the last day of the month… Halloween!  A great way to practice counting, number recognition, identifying color patterns and predicting what colors and numbers will come next.

There were some fun costume parties to attend with treats to be gathered.

And imaginations to be used in telling adventure stories of the witch who lived at the castle and Robin-Hood (often called Red Riding Hood) who was the hero and the lost princess Pea with her magical unicorns and… more!

October has been a full month of fun.  I love being with my children.