Happy Halloween! I hope everyone had a safe and fun evening!
 
All things Halloween was what this week was all about. The Halloween costume dress up and candy hunt was the highlight of the week. It was something they sure had to wait for! They did a great job helping each other find the candy too!
 
We spent a couple of days scooping, brainstorming Jack-o-lantern faces and carving our pumpkin. What ooey gooey fun! We were all very excited to see that the light inside flashed rainbow colours!
 
We read quite the variety of story books. It was also nice to have had the Storybook Truck come by to give us a new set of books. For one of our songs this week, we practiced keeping a beat. The song Who Took the Candy from The Trick-or-Treat Bag was very helpful in this. By the end of the week they were following along quite well and also remembered all the words and how to respond when someone said that THEY took the candy from the trick-or-treat bag.
 
The kids used little ghosts, bats and pumpkins to make more complex patterns. Now that we seemed to have mastered AB patterns, we have moved onto more difficult ones.
 
The kids had to find creepy crawlies in spaghetti! When found, they had to say what letter each creepy crawly started with. They did a great job working together when someone was unsure what letter it was.
 
The letters we worked on were C and O. Magic C Bunny came out to help us learn about the letter C and what letters use the letter C as a starting point to writing them. We practiced making sideways rainbows to practice the letter C and drew bubbles coming from a fish’s mouth to practice the letter O.
 
Additional activities we did this week include; making a paper witch on a broom, matching coloured witch hats, playing a memory game where you had to find bats under hats, matching uppercase and lowercase letter pumpkins, and used clips to match letters, letter sounds, and pictures (It’s a great way to add in a little fine motor work). 
 
We also celebrated Ms. Audra’s birthday. So naturally, we had yummy treats. The little ones were so cute with their birthday wishes and crafts for me, once they figured out whose birthday it was! It was also great fun playing with Ms. Audra’s new keyboard.
 
We had quite the range of weather this week. Snow, Rain, Sunshine…we were ready for it all! We learned that tree climbing is difficult when wearing anything other than summer clothing, so we opted for climbing huge rocks instead. Can’t hold these guys back from their need to climb!

This week was all about Scarecrows. We learned where they “live”, what their purpose is and even built our own. Stuffing the scarecrow turned out to be great fine motor work as they crumpled newspapers to stuff the clothing and poked Raffia through the tiny closed up ends of the legs, arms and neck. The scarecrow was also painted with glow in the dark paint, although we are unsure of how well this paint works. 
 
We learned that Scarecrows often “live” on farms where they scare away birds so they don’t eat crops. Together we tried to figure out what sorts of crops grow on a farm. The kids sure thought up a lot! After this, we estimated how many corn kernels were in the container and counted them into groups of 5. It turned out that we had 573! Later in the day, after counting the popcorn kernels we did a little science and popped them in the microwave. The kids practiced their listening and patience while they made their own ears of corn so they could then have their own bowls of popcorn. How exciting!
 
The kids have been doing great on the crafts we have been doing where they are given only an example and no instructions. I like to see how they process what they see into what they make.
 
Our main scarecrow song this week was “Dingle Dangle Scarecrow” and below is a list of the themed books we read.
 
The Scarecrow’s Hat by Ken Brown
The Silly Scarecrow (a Clifford book) by Norman Birdwell
The Lonely Scarecrow by Tim Preston
The Falling Leaves and the Scarecrow by Steve Metzger and Jill Dublin
 
The letters we worked on this week were T and H. They practiced building H with wooden pieces, tracing H with stickers while singing the “Where Do You Start Your Letters” song by Handwriting Without Tears and drawing overlapping Ts to further practice where to start their letters. The kids also went on a letter hunt for all of the uppercase and lowercase letters. Once they found a letter patch, then ran back to me, told me what it was called and if it was an uppercase or lowercase and then glued the letter patch to the scarecrow.
 
Some other things we did this week included journal drawings of a scarecrow story we read, practiced AB patterns with farm pictures, built Mat Man, made snow angels, rolled snowballs and made snowmen.

Happy Thanksgiving to All! I hope everyone is enjoying a little time with family, no matter the size.
 
Family and Thanksgiving was our focus this week. We started off our week talking about what makes a family, different family make-ups and how the most important thing is the love that you share. The kids worked hard all week on their own family home projects where they cut, glued photos and decorated. They were very proud, and as many parents may know, they sure enjoyed sharing their Family Home projects with anyone who walked in the door. Everyone worked on drawing pictures of their families, sequencing family size photos, and practicing counting and number identification through a family card clipping activity.
 
We learned and talked about what is means to be thankful and we used our Thankful song to learn about more words like grateful and generous. Generous became a big word for us, as we talked about others having less than we do and what we can do to help. Together the kids drew the things they were thankful for on a large paper and made Thankful Turkey Handprints. They practiced counting and number identification through a Thanksgiving matching game.
 
Some of the books we read this week include:
Heather has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
Love Makes a Family by Sophie Beer
The Little Red Hen by Paul Galdone
Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland and Sonja Lamut
A Family is a Family is a Family by Sara O’Leary
 
The two songs we used at Morning Meeting this week were:
The Family Song by Sesame Street and Thankful by Juicebox Jukebox
 
For letter practice this week we practiced horizontal and vertical lines by making a ladder that led up to two drawings that start with the letter E. The kids also went on a hunt to find vertical and horizontal lines and sorted them into their workbooks.
 
As many families may know, we have been working our way through the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osbourne. We have been practicing how to use good listening ears, how to make predictions and how to make the pictures in our heads because these are chapter books that usually only have one picture per chapter. We just finished the 8th book and have now found all 4 things that were needed to free Morgan from the spell she was under. Finding out that Peanut the mouse was Morgan, leading Jack and Annie to the 4 items needed to break the spell, for the past four chapter books was quite surprising. Now we will be onto book 9 Dolphins at Daybreak.
 
And of course we played in leaves (while we still could), explored NoseHill Park and climbed some trees.