Halloween Happenings

Can I just say PHEW? I think this afternoon teachers everywhere let out a big sigh of relief after the school day was over. I loved today, we had so much fun but PHEW I was tired!

After doing Daily 5 as usual we got to work on our haunted house writing. I am loving this project! Today they added their detail sentences, being sure to have at least one adjective in each sentence. They were so creative. "You will love my pointy spiked furniture." "At night you can sleep in a spooky coffin". I even played some spooky music in the background while they wrote.

Then, my assistant and I decked the room with orange and black. The kids had NO idea what we were doing. It was cute to listen to them try to come up with what we were going to do.

I brought in a pumpkin and we estimated and then counted the number of seeds in it. It was funny watching them put their hands inside the pumpkin - they thought it was so gross. There were many sound effects added. :)

I split the pumpkin seeds up into groups and each group made piles of 10 to see how many seeds they had. They did a quick folded paper activity to show their number in different ways - number, number word, ten sticks and ones, and expanded form.

Then we used base ten blocks to practice regrouping and added up the totals from all of the groups. We are just starting to learn 2 digit addition so this was perfect! Our pumpkin had 457 seeds!

For a fun treat, we made spider cookies using oreo cakesters, twizzlers, frosting, and m and m's.

If the kids weren't excited enough I let them play pin the nose on the pumpkin. This was a dollar store find and it was fun!

When they came back from specials each kiddo had some goodies on their desk. The bag of candy was from a sweet assistant who works with one of my students. She was so kind to make them each a little goody bag! I also made a bag with a Halloween joke book (from the Teacher Wife), vampire teeth (the parents will love me), erasers, and some rings.

I wish I had a picture of what the classroom looked like at the end of the day - it was such a mess! I spent a good 30 minutes simply sweeping, vacuuming, and cleaning up all of our activities. Days like today are exhausting and messy, but well worth it!

Classroom This and That

Today I've got a variety of tid-bits from my classroom. I wanted to take some pictures but of course I left my camera at home. So I apologize for the poor cell phone quality pictures.

The awesome writing process tracker pencil chart that has been floating around Pinterest. I knew I had to make one! I can't wait to start using it!

I bought this awesome Haunted House Descriptive Writing Project on TPT and I love it! So far we have brainstormed who would buy a haunted house and what kinds of things they might look for in a house. They had some super creative ideas! Today they made their haunted houses out of construction paper and tomorrow we will start writing our ads.

This is my teacher bulletin board that is right next to my desk. I'm a big fan of the polka dot border. The beach/hammock picture is great to stare at and pretend that I'm there in the middle of a stressful day. :)

Don't you just love our cute fact and opinion owls? We have learned all about facts and opinions and one of our activities was these cuties. The kiddos simply cut the strips and sorted them by fact and opinion before gluing them onto the owls.

My classroom job chart. I use clothespins for EVERYTHING. I have a long list of jobs and each kid gets their own job. We keep the same jobs for 2 weeks. I "pay" the kids Eagle Bucks (part of our school behavior incentive program) on "payday". They know that I pay more for a job well done! Then the kids who get paid the most get to pick their next job first. I told the kids that I want them to do their job well so they get to choose instead of me assigning. It works GREAT! They love the responsibility and it helps me out so much to not worry about some of the little things in the classroom.