Halloween is Coming!

Oh boy...Halloween is coming. This Wednesday will really put my teaching skills patience to the test! If I can handle kids pumped full of sugar I'm pretty sure I can do anything!!! Okay, my personal pep talk is over. Now for a few of the things we've been up to this week...

Our school held its annual pumpkin decorating contest this week. The theme was twins or pairs. It is a bit of an understatement to say that I have a passion *obsession* for animated films (I may or may not have watched The Lorax three times this weekend as I was working...) and so I immediately made the executive decision that our class would make a pair of Minions from Despicable Me. Of course it wasn't too hard convincing my kiddies that this was a *brilliant* idea after showing them this clip:

ahahaha I've watched that about a zillion times and it still makes me laugh. I love minions. 

SO ANYWAYS, here are our finished products:

I think they are all kinds of adorable <3 

They ^ are all pretty darn cute too :P

Next up, we completed a Nam in a Ten Frame culminating activity to show our new knowledge of five and ten frames:

The kids really enjoyed this activity and I loved it, too! It's great because it is an easy way to assess who understands how to correctly use a ten frame (filling up each square one at a time from left to right and then from left to right again, just like we read a book). Not only that but I can see who grasps the concept of basic addition that the ten frame introduces (by answering "I need ___ more letters to make 10"). And, of course, it's always great to throw in some language arts (talking about which letters need capitals or lowercase) and fine motor (having them cut out the small circle counters to write their names as opposed to simply having them write their names directly in the ten frame).

You can pick up this activity--complete with ten frame printable, counters printable, and "Name Frames" worksheet--FOR FREE in my little TpT store by clicking the pic below:

 In our Daily & Seasonal Changes unit in Science, we were learning about the seasons as a cycle that has no beginning or end (with an emphasis on visualizing "cycle" as a circle). I created this simple worksheet to see if the kiddies were able to show the seasons in the correct order:

The could start at any circle with any season they wanted. They also had to pay close attention to the arrows in the diagram so that they completed the activity in a clockwise circle (as opposed to completing the top two circles left to right and the bottom two circles left to right). The purpose of that is to emphasize the cyclical nature of the seasons.

 There is an updated version of this activity in my Daily & Seasonal Changes Science Focus pack but you can download this alternative sample for *FREE* by clicking the pic below:

And finally, we continued some pumpkin themed centres with this writing centre activity:

The kiddies had 5 different sets of scrambled pumpkin sentences that they had to group, unscramble, and copy. To prep this centre, alls I did was print out a bunch of copies of the last page from THIS freebie, cut out the blank pumpkins, laminate them, and write words and numbers on them with permanent marker (I chose to write on the pumpkins AFTER laminating them just in case I change my mind down the road and want to erase and change the sentences I have chosen). If you would like a FREE copy of my worksheet, you can click on the pic below:

That's it for now! Have a fun and relaxing weekend everyone :)