Pirate Pete Preschool: What's Cookin' for Halloween?

After hearing another wonderful Star of the Week presentation we explained to the children that with Halloween coming up next week we would take a few days to talk about sometimes foods that are not very healthy and always foods that can have lots of things in them to make us stronger and help us grow.

We started out showing them the fun colors that are on Skittles candies and made some rainbows with hot water then talked about the science behind what made the Skittle turn white. The children learned about color transfer, color mixing and the word dissolve.

Then, we cut open a variety of fruits and veggies and used them as stamps with paint to see what kinds of shapes, patterns and marks can be made with these items like lemon and apple halves, bell peppers, broccoli, celery, etc.

We worked on some gross motor coordination and balance by walking ice cream cones made out of paper cones with balloon ice cream scoops. We did a relay with these items and worked on balancing the balloon on the paper cone and then passed it on to the next person in our team.

Later in the week we took out more candy to count and sort it by color then draw the number that represented the amount of that color on the page. Feel free to have the kids sort and count their candy next week for some meaningful math time as they earn their treats!

Fine motor skills were worked on with food this week when we used sticks of raw spaghetti and fruit loop cereal to make patterns and see how high we could create rainbow towers!

After pasta and cereal we moved on to carrots! We read the numbers written on carrots and then glued down that amount of green 'leaves' to the top to see the amount match the number written.

After carrots we read a story about, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and how his tummy felt sick after having too many treats.

This week we also sang a lot of food related songs about healthy always foods and unhealthy sometimes foods and pretended to eat them, talked about their color and texture and sounds.

Some of our science activities this week included food as well. We made lemon volcanoes and talked about the power of the sour! The acid in the lemons mixed with the baking soda created the volcanic reaction that smelled terrific!

We reviewed number/letter sequencing to make an ice cream cone we then filled in with colors for flavor then enjoyed a few more singing and dancing.

We fed the very hungry caterpillar a variety of food from the play kitchen and then made pizza complete with all the toppings we like to enjoy. Some were cheese only, some had meat and cheese and some were supreme with veggies too!

We worked on our cutting skills more this week and wanted you to see the various stages our students are at in terms of their cutting skills.

Some can hold the paper in one hand and cut with the other while other children need the teacher to hold and turn the paper for them while they focus on using the scissors. Then there are children who are still making fringe. All of these stages of cutting are ok and we are working on helping everyone improve at their own pace.

Beans are a terrific source of protein and very good for our bodies so we looked and and sorted a variety of beans this week as well and learned vocabulary that matched the beans, their color, etc.

By Friday we started preparing for Halloween by creating ghost experiments with ghosts growing with gas we trapped in bottles with baking soda and vinegar.

We worked on number sequencing from counting up and down with candy corn and pumpkins. In kindergarten the expectation will be for a child to count all the way up to and back down again to and from 100 by the end of their year so counting forward and back with three numbers to practice.

We mummified ourselves and our teachers on Friday for some fun dramatic play before creating some decorations for the room and our Halloween party next week. Be sure to check out the frankensteins we now have hanging.

We made Halloween themed necklaces to work on our fine motor skills then built pumpkin towers out of candy pumpkins and toothpicks for a little bit of STEM fun to end the week.

What's Coming Up?