Candy Corn Trick or Treat Bags

This is a quick and easy way to make trick or treat bags. I painted the children's hands with white, orange, and yellow paint then had them stamp their handprint onto a paper lunch bag. 

When they were dry, I stapled paper handles onto them and we used them to trick or treat around the school. 

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Magnet Fun

We use magnets to hang art in our classroom. Today, while I was switching out the art, one of the children asked if he could see a magnet. I showed him how it sticks to metal. Soon all of the children were asking for magnets. They went around the room looking for metal objects to put their magnets on. Here are some of the metal things we found. 

The grate on the bathroom door. 

The screw on the toilet paper holder.

The screw on the light switch. 

A can. 

We discovered that some magnets stick to each other. 

And some do not. 

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Haunted House and Jack O Lanterns

Halloween is almost here! Today we carved several of our pumpkins. The children helped me scoop out the seeds with spoons and with there hands. Everyone had a chance to scoop, feel, and smell the seeds. 

 

We have been talking alot about appropriate ways to express anger, so the children naturally wanted all of the pumpkins to have angry faces. This is probably so that they could tell them to use thier words when they are angry. In the end we decided on one angry pumpkin and one happy pumpkin. 

Earlier in the day we had made ghosts by placing crumpled paper in the middle of a paper towel sheet and tying a string around it. We drew faces on the ghosts and hung them in the wooden castle In our classroom. 

With the ghosts flying around its cieling, the castle was a perfect place to put our jack o lanterns and uncarved pumpkins.

Now we have a very fun and not scarey haunted house!

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Painting Pumpkins

The children have been very excited about Halloween and wanted to cut our pumpkins open to make jack o' lanterns. We still have a week and a half until Halloween and jack o' lanterns only last a few days so we decided to paint the pumpkins today and cut them closer to Halloween. 

The children each chose a pumpkin and started painting. 

The children enjoyed painting on a different medium. 

When they were finished painting their little pumpkins, they worked together to paint the big pumpkin. 

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Making Jack O' Lanterns with Glue

Anyone who has worked with two year olds knows that they love to squeeze glue onto paper. This activity allows them to squeeze as much glue as they want while making a cute Halloween decoration. Before starting the activity, I collected round plastic lids like the one in the picture below. Then I mixed orange paint with regular school glue and poured it into our glue bottles.

The children squeezed the glue into the plastic lids.

When they had squeezed their fill (or when they ran out of glue), they added eyes, noses, mouths, and stems that I had cut from construction paper. 

Once they were finished, we put the jack o' lanterns on a shelf to dry. 

When they were completely dry (this took a few days), we peeled them off of the plastic lids. 

We poked holes in them, put fishing line through the holes, and hung them from a large tree branch we found outside. 

And then we had a jack o' lantern tree!

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Dino Museum

Some of the children in our class have seen real dinosaur bones at the Natural History Museum and they have shared their experiences with the class. We decided to turn the wooden castle in our classroom into a museum. After some discussion, the children decided to call it the Dino Museum.

We printed out pictures of dinosaurs and attached them to the dinosaur bone displays that the children made earlier in the week.  Then we hung them in the museum.

We also hung our T-Rex pictures.

The children were very proud of their paleontological work!

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Young Paleontologists

This week we talked about dinosaur bones. We read Digging Up Dinosaurs by Aliki. After reading the book, I buried dinosaur bones (Q-Tips) in the sensory table and the children pretended to be paleontologists. They used shovels and magnifying glasses to find the bones. Some of the children used paint brushes to dust off the "bones" just like the paleontologists did in the book. 

When they were finished finding the bones, the children put them together to make dinosaurs. They glued them onto paper and told me which dinosaur they had made. 

 We also went digging for dinosaur teeth (that I cut from card stock).

 We glued the teeth onto T-Rex skulls. 

When they were finished, some children examined their work with magnifying glasses. 

Listening to  two year olds saying the word "Paleontologist" made my day!

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Stegosaurus and Triceratops

The children’s interest in dinosaurs has not waned even after a week of dinosaur related activities. We have done several dinosaur related art project in the past few days. 

We made hand print Stegosauruses...

and Triceratops puppets. 

For these, I cut the horns and the frills out of construction paper and had the children count out three horns, two eyes, and one frill each for their puppet. Then they glued all of the pieces onto a paper bag.

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Notes for Mommy and Daddy

I recently bought several packages of greeting cards that I found in the clearance section at Micheal's craft store. I have been meaning to add them to the writing center. Today one of the children in our class was very sad because he was missing his daddy. I suggested that he write a note to his daddy telling him how much he was missed. Just then I remembered the greeting cards. I pulled them out of the closet and we realized that they were perfect for writing notes to our loved ones. The child quickly cheered up as he wrote his "letter" because he had found a way to communicate with his parent.

Other children joined us in the writing center. Some wanted the teachers to help them write thier notes but others wrote the notes all by themselves. 

When they were finished writing, I asked each of the children to read his or her note to me. Everyone "read" that they missed and loved their mommies and daddies.

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