PeeWees: Pumpkin, Pumpkin (week 2)

[More from Shaunel on week 2 of Pumpkin, Pumpkin.]

Favorites from the day: play dough. Hands down, the most fascinating peek into their little minds. So glad I caught a tiny snipit on video. Don't mind my annoying teacher voice and enjoy the kids.

Arrive/Free Play

-Farm Animals
-Cars
-Ball Track
[Really fun to just sit and watch them interact, and use their imagination. Totally understood how children learn best through unstructured play. Poppy definitely was the most descriptive with what she was doing. Often the boys would just stop and stare at her while she told them about her Dog fluffy and the duck she was keeping in her backpack (so it wouldn't get lost). Hilarious.]


Circle/Welcome 
-Welcome Song
-5 little Pumpkins [they LOVED this]
-Count 12 #ed Pumpkins
-Sing "Pumpkin Pumpkin"
-Alphabet Song (march), stop on "P" and make a scary jack o lantern face
-Book
    *discuss seeds, and growing
    *focus on the pumpkin becoming a jack o lantern

Activity #1
-Remember the seeds we planted?
-Sing Little Seeds
-Go “pick pumpkins” (I put our pumpkins we made last week, out in the back yard)
     *Have kids pick out their pumpkin by identifying the letter their name starts with [we'll keep working on this]
-gather rocks for pumpkin faces

Snack

-wash hands, potty [Jackson had a hard time letting Henry use his potty--good thing Henry is so patient]

-pumpkin muffins, raisins, apples (make jack o lantern faces w/ raisins in the muffins) [Henry was the only one who tried this and was so proud of the faces he created]

-recount the field trip to the pumpkin patch
-Read “Apples and Pumpkins”

[The kids did SO well listening to "Apples and Pumpkins" while eating their snack, totally impressed]

Activity

-Sing 5 Little pumpkins

-Play dough jack-o-lantern faces w/ rocks

 [Besides what you'll see in the video, these jack o lantern's turned into walrus', rocketships, balls, hot dogs, snakes, etc. They loved kissing it, and Bodie couldn't stop eating it--luckily this wasn't news to his mom. I let them play for a good 20 min, and I should have let them keep going--their attention spans and interactions were incredible. Poppy kept giving Jackson pieces of hers and saying "Here you can put it right here"--Jackson was completely confused why anyone would be sharing with him. Henry was initially concerned with how messy his hands felt, but eventually got over it and joined in the imaginative fun.]

Pumpkin Making

-Make last weeks pumpkins into Jack-o-lanterns
-black triangles, glue

 
Dancing

Dance with instruments to Halloween songs:

Dance Macabre  and In the Hall of the Mt King

[Bodie apparently understood Dance Macabre much better than the average person, and was totally scared out of his wits (it's really not that scary of a song, so this was fascinating). So, Bodie went and sat in the dining room, which seemed to make him feel better. The other kids oscillated between being confused as to why he was scared and running around like the headless horseman. Jackson repeatedly asked Bodie "Whatcha doin?" Poor Bodie kept answering, but Jackson in his normal 2 year old self, continued asking until I diverted him away (Bodie hasn't learned to ask it back at Jackson.)]

Close

Re-read book

So Long King Kong [they can pretty much do this by themselves]

Sing Scary Skeletons