"Shake dem Halloween Bones"

Shake, shake, shake dem bones now,
Shake, shake, shake dem bones now,
Shake, shake, shake dem bones...
At the Hip Hop Halloween Ball!

Even I have been bored with my blog lately so I decided to post some of my favorite activities we've done at preschool. I do realize that some of you may say, "This is even MORE boring" but oh well...my life IS preschool (and school) so...this is the best I can do!

First of all I thought I'd show you all my favorite preschool Halloween books...or at least ones I have something to say about.




The top one is We're Off to Find the Witch's House. This book is so cute and the kids love it. I highly recommend it for your kids. :) It has really cute illustration. It has sort of a sing-songy rhythm to it. We thought about even making it into one of our Halloween songs because it's really cute. Sortof like "We're goin on a bear hunt" or something. It's extra cute.

The one on the left is The Teeny Tiny Ghost. So cute!

The middle one is Bears in the Night. It's not necessarily a "Halloween book" but it is my favorite kids' book of all time! So cute and fun. It's great with teaching--up, down, around, through, in, out, etc. It was also my favorite to read to the kids in China. They LOVED it and even with their little English (very little), they somehow memorized it and LOVED it! We would use it in "drama time" and act it out. It was such a blast. After reading it a few times in preschool this year we acted it out too. The kids were just screaming and laughing with excitement and loved it! I LOVE this book! Awesome for even really little kids, and great for learning to read!

The book on the right is Shake dem Halloween Bones. Wow...this book was different! I bought it in a set of 2 out of the Scholastic book order. The other book that came with it was Skeleton Hiccups and that book was...just lame. But this book was...WOW. The kids picked it for me to read and I opened it up (never having looked through it before) and began to read. Little did I know that the book would end up reading like a rap. Seriously. It has all the cute classic characters in it like Jack (and the beanstock), Cinderella, Tom Thumb, Snow White, etc. It was just so different though! :) I decided to go with it and read it like a rap once I got the rhythm. The kids all had these looks on their faces like "What one EARTH?!" I read it to Spencer later (warning him before hand that it was the weirdest book I'd ever read). He loved it, and always talks about it. He thought it was crazy too though! He's so funny! Anyway, the italicized words at the beginning of the post are from this book. :)

This next picture is of one of the projects that we did at the beginning of the year during our "Pet Theme." It's pretty ugly...but the kids loved it! My sister, Stephanie gave me the idea because she does this with her preschool and they love it too!

We just took socks (each kid brought their own, any size, any color), and stuffed them with batting. Then we cut off the end and added a string mouth, pom-pom nose, and googly eyes. Then I just cut triangles out of paper and folded them and we glued them on for the ears. The kids ADORED their new "pets." Next year I think I'll give them the option of pointed ears or hang down ears (like dog ears). Then it'd be more like a dog or a cat or something. Nonetheless Chief absolutely loved the sock "pet" I brought home for him! ;)

We did this next one at the beginning of Autumn when we were talking about the leaves falling from the trees.

Miss Leslie was the one who had this idea, she teaches the morning 4-5 year old class (I teach the afternoon). Leslie just bought small fall colored puzzles at the dollar store (these pieces looked like they would've come from like a Monet type puzzle and were the PERFECT colors). I was so surprised with how cute this turned out! If you click on the image you should be able to view it full-sized!

This last one the kids just LOVED. Leslie gave me the cute scarecrow outline, but the pumpkin idea I got from www.kidssoup.com thank you to my sister Stephanie.




We painted the scarecrows and then glued on these cute patches of fabric. We then glued the scarecrows on a popsicle stick and stuck the stick into the mini pumpkins. The kids were SO excited about having their very own pumpkins that they could take home and keep. I told them that they could keep the scarecrow part forever and use it as a decorations every year if their parents wanted them to. I also told them that after a while the kids would have to throw out their pumpkin because it would get rotten. That part may not have stuck with some of them because they informed me that they were going to name their pumpkin and keep it forever. I kept trying to explain that it would even start to stink but one little girl insisted that would be okay and that her mom would let her keep it anyway. :) We'll see how that conversation goes between her and her mom. :)

Well that's all I have for now. I am sure there'll be more to come later! :)