Halloween Fun!

Halloween Art Project from orange and green stripes. 

Here’s our weekly graph chart…we graphed our favorite Halloween candy!

 Well, I’m heavy duty into my 16th September of teaching in the primary grades of my Sandy, Utah
  school and I have the tiniest class I’ve ever been given!  I have 13  talented 1st grade students. I just got the 13th one last week. He is only 5 years old!  It is amazing how fast they are learning and the progress they have already made in creative writing and reading speed.  I love their cute little comments and their sweet faces.  Here we are doing a Halloween acrostic poem on BATS. Look at our
cute handprint bats! So Cute!

This was a really striking Halloween bulletin board…we got lots of compliments on it!

Handprint Bats are super Easy art projects for kids even in preschool or Kinder. 

 I have 4 little asian children,  who are super polite, and very endearing. One stands by me when I’m helping her with her work and pats me on the back. Now WHO gets THAT in their day to day job! I get pats on the back from my customers everyday! I feel embarrased to pick up a paycheck! Well, not really, I’m lying about that.

Vera, Allie and Subin, on Halloween playing Bingo at the party.

I got a bingo!

Mrs. Moss trying to be Cher…..or just a hippie!
We made skeletons in pairs….boy that’s a lot of bones!

Well, we had our first field trip in October too. I had organized this field trip 4 years ago and we’ve gone ever since. We start out going to the Monte Beane Museum in Provo, Utah on the Brigham Young University campus. It is a life science museum full of taxidermy animals in all categories from patterned snakes to a giant zebra to a huge, male elephant right as you walk in the door.

  The kids loved the live animal presentation in the auditorium where they show turtles, lizards like the lazy iguana, and snakeskins from live snakes that have molted. The kids can’t believe how long it actually is till 5 students stand on stage and unfold it! You can hear the ooohs and aaahs all around.  I love seeing all the parents getting into the scientific exhibits with their children and teaching them their own love of animals and science tidbits about each species.

After the field trip I went to Gardner Village with my daughters and 3 granddaughters!

 I smile as I walk around seeing the amazed expressions when the students’ see the giant butterfly display decorated out of thousands of large and small actual butterflies made into a 6 foot high butterfly shape on the entrance wall. It is too cool. So is the dead, two-headed snake. The boys especially love seeing the “liger” which is a cross between a tiger and a lion and the girls all love the tiny dwarf deer.

Most kids recognize the warthog from the Lion King and they all are mesmerized by the porcupine. Nobody has ever really seen one up close, including ME! Animals are so very cool. Even the insect and rat and mouse exhibits were cool to kids. Of course there is the insect and creepy crawly beetles and cockroaches from all around the country. Yuck. Not a fan of that exhibit. But the boys would spend all their time there if they could.

Here are some Halloween MAD LIBS that we did and some cool graphic pumpkins!

Then we end the day going to this huge park called Discovery Playground in American Fork, Utah. It was a park built by the community with free community labor. It is something to be emulated by other cities across America. They had a lot of free materials donated by citizen small business owners, and combined with free nightly labor for a few months. They ended up with castles to climb and forts, musical instruments, drums, swings and monkey bars and ropes of all kinds surrounded by a giant, brown, picket-fence for safety. I love that place! And so did the kids.

I forgot to bring my camera on the field trip! So Sorry! But don’t you think my grandkids are cute?
Minnie Mouse and Dorothy from Wizard of OZ.

 We ate our sack lunches and lemonade and then had a ball hanging out at the park and getting some sunshine. The moms all had fun chatting it up with all the teachers and each other too. And the bus ride to and from is always a hit. I don’t know how those old bus drivers don’t lose their minds with all that noise day in and day out. The excited kids squealing and laughing and singing songs all the way home.  Everyone gets back tired and pleasantly exhausted and we all  write and draw a picture about the fun day we’ve had in our journals. A day in the life of a teacher of young kids. 🙂 Wouldn’t you love ta trade jobs with me sometimes?