Artsy Pumpkins

There have been some very crafty kids in our school! Pumpkins, pumpkins are everywhere! I thought I would share some of my favorite pumpkin crafts that are the current decor in our classrooms.

Craft bucket clean-out Pumpkins
  The inspiration for these cute jack-o-lanterns was actually the need to clean out their craft bucket and use up some of the leftover materials from other projects. These are the school-aged jack-o-lanterns.

  Our pre-k class was inspired and wanted to try it, too!

Painting Mini Pumpkins
We recently visited the pumpkin patch and brought back mini-pumpkins to decorate.We have been painting and adorning them with glitter in our art center every day.

Easel Painting Still Life
This was a still life pumpkin painting done by a preschool student.

Knuckle Pumpkin Patch
These have been around for years, but I still love them! The teacher painted the child's knuckles to help them make a pumpkin patch.

Paper Plate Pumpkins
Paper accents added to an orange painted paper plate make adorable little pumpkins!

Free-hand circles and tissue decoration
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this fine motor activity!!!! The 3's class drew circles with markers, then filled in the pumpkins with craft tissue!!!

Pick-a-part Magazine Face Jack-o-Lanterns
We've made some cute jack-o-lanterns by cutting facial features out of magazines and gluing them on the pumpkin shape. Somehow I managed to have this activity going for a couple of days, but didn't get any photos of the finished products. I'll try to add some here later.

Paper Bag Pumpkins
We've also made lots and lots of paper bag pumpkins. Here's a pic of them added to our pumpkin patch from a couple of years ago, as well as a few of this year's crop.

In all honesty, Halloween is my least favorite time of year, but seeing all these pumpkins adorning our school classrooms have really brightened my season!

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Halloween Hangover

Yes, I know Halloween was so last week, but we've been so busy that I've not had time to post the fun we've had. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that Halloween is not my favorite holiday or time of the year, but I do try to make it enjoyable for the kids.  

Our dairy farm/pumpkin patch field trip earlier in the month was postponed due to weather and was rescheduled for Oct. 31. Our Halloween Happenings all took place the week before the actual holiday, so we would be free for two major field trips. I thought I would share some of the "Best of" Halloween at our school. Maybe it will help me be more in the spirit next year when I come back to see what we did.

Our class dressed up in costumes for the morning.

We watched as the younger kids paraded through our room to show off their costumes.

My co-worker's husband designed this awesome robot costume for their son, using common household items. Definitely the best handmade costume I saw this year.....

Here's some of the best treats I saw....

Our favorite party game...."Wrap the Mummy!". 

We divided the class into teams, with each team wrapping one member, but it was so much fun, eventually the rest decided to wrap themselves, too!

Since our field trip to pick pumpkins to fill our pumpkin patch in dramatic play had been postponed, we made our own pumpkins to fill our pumpkin patch out of brown paper lunch sacks and paint.

Many of our classrooms went all out decorating their rooms, but this decoration was my favorite! 

And my favorite bulletin board was done by some of our infants. We've had a major baby boom with our staff recently, so this was an especially special "Bumkin Patch"! 

I'll post soon about our wonderful trips to the dairy farm/ pumpkin patch and to the fire station!

Ghost Dough: A Sensational Sensory Experience

My friend Karen, over at Flights of Whimsy posted about her "Cloud Dough" recently, and I knew we just had to try it. We used some store bought "Moon Sand" about a month ago. It was very expensive and came in a very small container.  

Karen's recipe is very easy:

8 cups of flour
I cup of baby oil
Mix well  

The kids decided since it was fairly close to Halloween that we should rename our concoction from "Cloud Dough" to "Ghost Dough". They've had a lot of fun with it, but it is very messy. We have a carpeted classroom and the flour mixture can really make a mess on our dark colored carpet. We've been putting a tarp down, but of course, children seem to have a knack of getting the dough just outside the boundaries of the tarp. All in al, the sensory experience far outweighs the mess. The children delight in running their fingers through it and molding it with playdough or sand molds as their hands. I guess we'll have to rename it again now that the Halloween season has ended. Hmmmm...maybe "Snow Dough" ?!! :)

Be sure to check out all the other great sensory ideas on Teach Preschool's "Every Day Sensory Play" linky: