Capilano Playschool: Getting Spooky

October is a food filled month. We are lucky to have such a wonderful province, full of farms and harvests. We spent our days over the last week exploring "Food Groups." Last week we spoke about Grains, Meat & Alternatives and Dairy products. It helped us enjoy organizing, and identifying during our circle and play.

During circle, I love offering the children opportunities to get up and move around the class. Using our food guide, the children did a small scavenger hunt to find food placed around the room to collect. They come back with one item, and wait for all of their peers to find their own item. With these items, we practice turn taking, public speaking, categorizing and grouping. During each child's turn, they would tell their class what they had found "I found a bun" and then place the correct spot of the food chart.

We also did some acting in our last circle this week! We have an owl mask, a witch mask and a pumpkin mask. The children go one by one, to announce what character they are going to act out. Each character has a script.

The witch says "HeeHeeHee"
The pumpkin says "Boo"
The owl says "WhooWhoo"

Another activity we enjoyed this week was exercising our knowledge in prepositions. I ask the children to move the spider, and they follow through with my direction. It is important to remind the children that it is okay to admit when they aren't sure where "behind" is. All of the children were very confident with this activity. By letting the children know I am okay with them not knowing, it reminds the children that to learn we need to speak up. That there is no shaming in needing a reminder, or being taught something new. It is exhilarating to learn something new, and sometime we just need to say "I need help"

Some children even enjoyed the challenge of being asked to put the spider on the right or left side of the pumpkin. Other directions were behind, in front, on the side, underneath and inside of the pumpkin.

To prepare for our Halloween festivities next week, we made our own decorations. The children were offered a piece of paper with a white chalk stripe down the middle. They were asked to cut on the white line to divide one piece of paper into two. I really wanted to point out the math concept to the children, to help them experience the concept of division.

After cutting the paper into two strips, they were invited to curve the paper to create a circle, and staple them together.

The children were very excited to use Ms Asha's stapler! It was a lot of focus to count the amount of clicks to ensure the staple was in the paper and we were ready to make a paper chain.

During circle, we spent time talking about "real" and "make believe." Halloween is a great holiday to experience and learn the differences. Creating a chart, the children told me about various items we see and hear about during the Halloween season such as pumpkins, bats and witches.

We also discussed the items that are real, but adults make believe that they do something they can not do, to make them "spooky" such as skeletons having no skin, and mummies coming back to life.

After our conversation, we played with mummies during our craft.

We had ginger bread cut outs, but used them as our bodies. Then by either cutting or ripping tissue paper, we decorated the bodies with mummy wrapping. The children enjoy cutting as often as possible, but ripping is very good for our fine motor and finger dexterity.

Crafting is one of my favorite classroom experiences. I really love offering the children an experience and seeing how the children interpenetrate direction and the materials they have.

She ripped up the paper, and placed it on one by one

This girl rolled up the paper one by one before gluing it on

There are many mediums to creative expression, but sometimes you can mix different materials to make something new. We used glue and shaving cream to create "puffy paint" to paint our own spooky ghosts. The glue is great in this experience because it will hold the "eyes" and other face pieces.

Our class enjoys messy experiences! We played in some Goop, which is cornstarch, water and food colouring.

Although we spent most of our time getting to know our senses at the end of September, and beginning of October, we enjoyed a blast from the past during a field trip to the Telus world of Science. We explored sight, smell, hearing, touching and even our taste!
.