Spooky School

I’m not a huge fan of Halloween.



Just ask my kids.  They’ll tell you the same. 



“Yea…our mom doesn’t like Halloween.  It creeps her out.”





This year I caved and planned a bit of theme work for the week.  For something new and to break up our routine just enough that they aren’t getting bored.



Not that MY kids could ever get bored with me as their teacher…



The kids ended up having a lot of fun and so did I.  Here’s a look at a few of the things they did:






For some extra math, this activity was fun.  Measuring and collecting data with Bats and Ghosts.



We used the pumpkin grid and spider math mats for simple counting/addition games.



Talked about order and sequence using these Jack-O-Lantern cards.



The boys did some dictionary work with these Spooky Synonyms worksheets.



And Elaina made words and read them with these Nonsense Pumpkin Words.



We read Skeleton Hiccups and then had to put together the Skeleton Floor Puzzle.



Elaina did a couple of our home-made File Folder Games, No Bones About It and the Boo Crew.














After reading several pumpkin poems, we talked about rhyming words and then made our own spooky poems.





And then mounted and illustrated them to hang up in the school room.



The biggest part of the theme work was spent writing spooky stories.  We used these tools that include spooky story starters, a story planner, and Halloween themed lined paper.



To add interest to their stories, we learned about onomatopoeias.  This story is one of our favorites and perfectly illustrates how to use them.




Olivia did a bunch of theme work too.



She learned about the life cycle of a pumpkin…



Matched up costumes with this game…




And played mad scientist with this set.  See the rest of what she did here.