Monster-iffic Fun!

   It has been a little quiet here because Fall assessments are underway, and thankfully almost done!! It really is tedious and time consuming, even though it does provide me with a general snap shot of where my munchkins are. However, by my own observations and working with them in small  groups, these assessments are only reinforcing where I believe each child is in terms of their own development and skill level.
   Anyhow, that has taken over classroom time and fundraiser & school events at my own munchkin's school has kept me busy for the past week or so. But now,hopefully as the month winds down, things will get back on track... only to get all shook up again when the holiday season hits!
   Last week, we did some fun Monster activities after reading fun books like Where the Wild Things Are and Go Away, Big Green Monster! Little munchkins always love Go Away, Big Green Monster... It is one of my favorites too!

    They created their very own monster, and some of them looked pretty scary and creepy, while others looked funny and cute! They each glued a sentence onto their paper and we added the color word of their monster.

    I added some fun little props (googly eyes, straws, beads and ghost & pumpkin cookie cutters) into the playdoh area so that they could get creative and make their own playdoh monsters. This was such a fun activity for them. We had the activity during our learning center time and when it was time to switch, many of them were too involved with making their monster, they gave some resistance in having to leave the table! 

Check out some of the awesome creations:

    I really enjoyed watching their creativity come through and the smiles on their faces as they were doing this... it makes me smile when I see how much they enjoy the activities that I put together for them.

    We also worked on print concepts, as the munchkins learned how to track words in a sentence. I created sentence cards with the predictable text in Go Away Big Green Monster. And they put a smile on my face at dismissal time, when some of them proudly showed their mom that they could "read" the monster sentences!!

This is only the start to all the Halloween themed fun we plan to have... and I say "plan" because my time in the classroom in limited until the Fall assessments are all completed and so, anything goes... !