Halloween!

Halloween week in the Pirate Pete Preschool is always fun and filled with exciting activities!  Working on our gross motor skills we tossed balls into pumpkins' mouths and rings onto witches' hats.  

For an even greater challenge, some of the preschoolers started further away from the pumpkins and hats.  The children practiced patiently waiting in line for their turn and enjoyed cheering their other classmates on!  

For this Halloween inspired math activity, we built giant pieces of candy corn.  Each piece of the candy either had a number in numeric form, a number in written form, or a number of black circles to count.  Matching the white piece with the actual number on it to the word form of the number was a great learning visual for the children.  For example, one color would have six dots, another color the word 'six' and the third color would have '6'.  The children would match them all up to the complete candy corn math puzzle.

The children loved playing with our science experiment this week!  This Halloween goo glowed in the dark under black lights!  The children were asked to describe what the goo felt like and how it smelled as they found the objects hidden in the goo like toy spiders and skeletons!  

Our letter of the day on Wednesday was P which was perfect for discussing pumpkins!  We are still working on a different letter each day of preschool and many of the children are moving beyond tracing the letter on their sheets but are beginning to practice writing the letters on their own as well. 

P is not only for pumpkin but play and paint and this candy corn art project may seem simple but the different brush twist made it a lot more interesting!  Instead of using regular paint brushes, we painted with clothes pins and cottons balls!  Some of the children found this easier while others found it more difficult and frustrating.  While this project included the process of following directions to achieve the candy corn look it also was a great way to process using unique materials to make art.   

Another process activity that promoted creativity as well as small motor skills was using play doh, pipe cleaners, and googley eyes as we constructed our own Halloween spiders.  We started this activity by rolling the play doh into a smooth, round ball.  Then we made sure to count out 8 legs and as many eyes as we wanted to include to complete our spider!  

Friday was another terrific Halloween Party complete with Trick or Treating around the school in a costume parade and coming back to the room for sweet treats and a ghostly piñata.  We hope everyone had a safe and pleasant Halloween this weekend and are looking forward to a warm week ahead!  Enjoy these photos from our fun annual event!

What's Coming Up?
This week we are going to be talking about places all around the world and will be including food in those discussions and activities as well.  

Don't forget the week of November 23rd there will be no preschool due to the Thanksgiving holiday.  We will send reminders as that week approaches. In the mean time we are looking forward to some full weeks of preschool!