[Love2nd]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a first year teacher and looking for advice and ideas. Originally for Halloween, I was going to have 3 parent volunteers come in and man a center station while I took one as well. I was going to have 8 children at each center and rotate to each Halloween station all morning. Then in the afternoon, the parents would still stay there and assist the children in changing into their costumes, helping at our parade, and then coming back to the classroom to help with the party.

I decided to nix the center idea for a few reasons.
1. I didn't really want parents in my room from 9am until 2pm nonstop
2. One of my volunteers last minute could only come if she brought her 2 year old daughter
3. Two of my stations didn't end up working out (one was a pumpkin station and none of my kids donated a dollar for a pumpkin and I can't afford 30 pumpkins!)

So with that being said, I'm struggling. I can either continue with centers or do the morning whole group. I have a few ideas for whole group, but I cannot find centers that the kids can do independently! Anything I can find for ideas would need a parent. Whole group would work but my ideas aren't very good.

Any help? What are you doing? Care to share any ideas or papers that you're doing on Halloween? Thanks so much!

[TchMe]

Here are some centers and projects my first graders can do alone:

1. Ghost writing - on a template of a ghost, they write these sentences: My ghost's name is ____. He lives in a _____. He likes to _____. I don't have the template on the computer but just find or draw a ghost and draw lines for the kids to write on.

2. Spider webs -drag a piece of yarn through a plate of black paint. Drop the yarn on a piece of white paper over and over. It looks like a web. Dip your thumb in the black paint and it is the spider's body. Use a marker to draw on 8 legs.

3. Decorate a paper pumpkin like a literary character from a book you've read.

4. I printed out some clip-art of halloween related pictures. Cut them out and let the kids play the old school game Memory where they have to flip them over and find a match. If your kids are good readers, make one set of pictures and one set of word cards and they have to match the picture of a pumpkin with the word pumpkin.

5. dltk-kids.com has some great projects where you just print out the templates and the kids color, cut and glue. Just click on the halloween section.

6. On a sentence strip, write a sentence about halloween on the kids' level. Cut between each word zigzag, like a puzzle piece. Have the kids put the sentences back together in order, copy the sentence and draw a picture to match. I use 6 different color sentences strips so it is easy to sort out the different sentences. I use high frequency words, like "I see a bat." and "Do you like Halloween?" (I do this for weekly centers anyway, it's so easy!)

7. Do you have any halloween books on tape? That could be a great listening center.

[Love2nd]

Thank you! Such cute ideas! Normally I would be way more prepared than I am but last minute plan changes has thrown me off! I love the ghost idea. We did something along those lines with monsters last week. Also really like the spider web idea and all the others! Have a happy Halloween!

[brittlelady]

Thanks for sharing your ideas.

[Darlenejoy]

Thanks for the great ideas! It's always so nice to have new activities.