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A little early Halloween Happiness!

One reason I love teaching little kids is because they get so excited with each new holiday or season. Being able to practice skills with holiday-themed activities seems to make learning so very fun for them! Since it’s October, we are all about Halloween here in our classroom.  My friends were so engaged all week long just because our activities had bats, pumpkins, spiders, etc.  Here’s what we’ve been up to this week…

1.  I added just a tiny little bit of Halloween decor to our classroom- nothing too fancy, but now this fun stuff is sitting on our bookshelf!

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2. We use pointers a whole lot to help us read, find words, etc., so I decided to switch up our pointers for the month of October to make pointing to words while we read even more exciting. 🙂  All I did was glue these little googly eyes to popsicle sticks and my little friends are obsessed- pointing while reading is just so amazing when you have a googly eye to help you.  I think it’ll be exciting just long enough till Halloween actually arrives and then I’ll come up with something new for November…probably something with a turkey?

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3. We have been super busy with Halloween centers that we’ll continue to use throughout the next few weeks of October.  My little friends are loving all the cute Halloween pictures on each of our activities. 

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First we practiced reading and creating CVC & CVCe words on our Mummy Mats! 

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Then we did a follow up practice on the iPads by reading the CVC or CVCe word and drawing a picture to match. 
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I always try to make sure my little friends are applying their learning of sight words, CVC & CVCe, etc while actually reading sentences and text, so they also practiced reading a sentence and finding the Halloween picture that matched.

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They also then did a little writing extension where they wrote their own sentences and added illustrations.  
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I just love this little frog!
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We worked on making predictions with a Halloween theme. Each little friend wrote what they think their costume will be and which candy they think they will get the most of– we’ll follow up with these predictions once Halloween is here!

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Don’t you love the “invisible man”-ha!
A little “Gotta Get that Ghost” rhyming fun! 

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And a little more writing about Halloween…
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Their clues weren’t too helpful, but they tried! 🙂 
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Trick or treating was almost everyone’s favorite! 
Again, cute little themed graphics really do make learning how to read that much more fun! You can check out more about this pack here!
4. One other center we used to practice identifying beginning sounds in words is my Batty about Beginning Sounds Freebie!  You can download it here!
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5. This year I’m trying to be better about switching out my student creations on the wall and I found the perfect solution (at least so far, I’ve been good with it!).  I have two different boards that now have “Take a Look at What We Know” header.  One is on a magnetic board which is so great because I just simply take down whatever I have up there and use my magnets to hang up the new stuff- so simple! My little friends love seeing their work hanging up… I just select a few to hang and switch up the students chosen each time.
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Thanks to TBA and Doodlebugs for hosting!

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Have a great  long weekend!
Aylin

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Picture of Aylin Claahsen

Aylin Claahsen

Providing resources and support to engage all readers.

9 Responses

  1. I love the googly-eye for a reading pointer. I'm going to to that this weekend.
    I'm picking up that halloween freebie for some of my little guys.

    those extension activities are great and I love the drawing portion of it–I've found that really makes it stick for the kids.

    Thanks!
    matt
    Digital: Divide & Conquer

  2. Love all the fun Halloween decor! I bought a cute candy bucket from Target but when you teach fifth grade you don't as much of the decorating as in the younger grades – especially now that we're not allowed to have curtains on our windows anymore 🙁 Boo!

    Amanda
    My Shoe String Life

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Hi, I'm Aylin!

I’m so happy you’re here! I’m a certified reading specialist who loves talking all things literacy. I have a huge passion for providing resources and support to engage all readers!

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