Here’s a cool Halloween art project I saw. Students use watercolor paint and principles of color hues to show what moonlight looks on a spooky night. The teacher provided students with a die-cut of the spooky house (or you could make copies of clip art and let students cut out the printed haunted house) and had students paint/draw in their own spooky trees once the paint had dried. Cool!
Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to meet or be friends with a real Pilgrim? Well, after introducing life in Plymouth, Massachusetts, students can answer this question and practice writing skills at the same time. Here’s a really simple activity:
1. Print the coloring page to the left (right click, choose “save image as” so you can save it to your computer and resize it later). You can print one for the whole class to look at or one for each student if you’d like.
2. Help the students brainstorm things they know about pilgrims. What are their names? What do they do everyday? What was their life like before they came to America?
3. Assign each student to write a character description of these two Pilgrims. Then color in the picture (if you gave one to each student).
4. Display the projects proudly for all to see!
Another excuse to bring turkeys into your classroom: odd vs. even numbers! This is a great practice page for first or second grades. Click here for the free printable PDF: Odd turkey worksheet PDF Gobble Gobble!
Thanksgiving is around the corner, so it’s time to bring out the turkeys! And after all, who doesn’t love adjectives!? This page is appropriate for first or second grade. Click here for the free worksheet: Turkeys Love Adjectives Worksheet PDF Enjoy!
Click here for more fun and free Thanksgiving stuff for kids! Help support this blog and keep it completely free by sharing it with your friends! Thank you!
I’m sure you’ve seen those pop bottle tornado gadgets (with 2 connected pop bottles filled with water so you can watch the tornado inside when you flip it over). They’re pretty cool, I know. Well they’re even cooler when used as a timer in your classroom! The kids think it’s bomb sauce and they all want to complete their assigned task fast so they can watch the tornado for as long as possible. Here’s how to make this an effective timing tool:
1. Time the tornado so you know about how long it takes from the time you flip it (mine was about 31 seconds).
2. Then introduce it to your class. The first time you show them, don’t make them do anything while it’s going; let them watch it 2 or 3 times to see how cool it is.
3. Give specific instructions as to what you’d like the students to do before tornado time is up. For example, backpacks packed, trash off the ground, desk cleared, etc.
4. Tell students that the faster they complete the task, the more time they’ll have to watch the tornado.
5. Actually use this system you’ve put in place. It’s cool!
My mom raised 4 kids, so we ended up getting a pretty good collection of Halloween junk (you know those small pumpkin buckets people fill with candy, window clings we never even used, stickers my mom had gotten during the after-Halloween sale, etc). One summer, we went through all our holiday boxes (everything from Christmas and Valentine’s Day to St. Patrick’s and 4th of July) and found tons of stuff that was still good that we weren’t ever going to use and wasn’t worth holding on to for the future grandkids. So we came up with a brilliant plan… use them to fill the “treasure chest” in my mom’s classroom! We had so much stuff from all the holidays that she gave out tons of prizes all the time for good behavior and she didn’t have to buy anything from teacher catalogs or Oriental Trading Company for an entire year! So ask around… see if anyone has unused (or slightly used, depending on the item) stuff they’d like to donate to your classroom!
This year, I’ve seen lots of owl themed things up in classrooms. This owl theme lends itself nicely to lots of puns using the word “who”. Here are two I particularly liked:
This teacher (photo above) made her own owl using butcher paper. Too cute!
My favorite thing about these classroom rules is that they’re worded in a positive way. The tell students what to do instead of what NOT to do. Why give kids ideas of things you DON’T want them to do?! As a side note, I learned this same principle in lifeguard training years ago: We were told to yell “walk” instead of “don’t run” because half of the kids would only hear the last half (“run”) and kids who weren’t paying attention would think they’re hearing the command to run all the time. Anyway, props to this teacher!
Many teachers (especially in lower grades) assign reading at home each night. Here’s a reading log series I made with an extra festive touch for different times of the year just for fun. Click on the links below the image to download each page. Enjoy!
Squarehead Teachers 