Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Halloween ~ Crafty Fun!


We've been having all kinds of Halloween inspired fun over the past couple of weeks. The very clever mummas that I work with in our micro school put together an awesome array of crafts for the kids to have a go with.

I'm fairly certain that none of these are anything new and can all be found online via a simple google search but I wanted to gather them all in one place and share some pictures with you all any how.


Halloween luminaries in recycled glass jars with battery operated tea lights. These are as simple as painting a jar with the colours and designs you wish or possibly using tissue paper with clear drying pva glue. The cute mummy is literally bandages and some goggle eyes. Simple, fast and they look so damn cute lighting up the coffee table.



Spooky black egg carton bats!

Simply cut up the egg carton leaving 3 egg holders intact, paint black, add fangs, goggle eyes and a string to hang it from.


The kids had so much fun with these and every single one looked completely different. You may need to hunt google for some skeleton head images but the rest is completely up to your imagination!

Cut up Q-tips and glue in any way you wish your skeleton to look.


Oh these delightful little Rock Monsters, anyone remember these?

Oh my I loved my little rock group like you wouldn't believe and when I saw these I just feel in love all over again. I was definitely 10 again for a few moments and I think I might've talked about my rock group love far too much that day ;-)

These couldn't get much easier, smooth rocks from the craft store, sharpies, decorate to your heats content and then hot glue on to a base board of some description.


This Pop Stick Haunted House craft is probably the most detailed of all the crafts but gee it looks fabulous and the mum that tackled this one did an awesome job as it was quite time consuming and used lots of hot glue...careful of those fingers!



It was a windy afternoon for the kids trying to put together these milk bottle ghosts but they did look rather cool all hanging there in the breeze.

Simply trim the milk bottle in half, draw your faces with a sharpie, attach streamers to the bottom and a piece of string to the top and hang.


Ok so technically not a craft but still a bunch of fun. This is such a great sensory activity, the kids will either love it or they will really dislike it. My younger two can't get enough and the ingredients make it such an easy thing to put together.

This particular slime is Oobleck, you can find the recipe for this all of the net.


I detailed our Halloween Themed Poems the other day if you'd like to check out how to put those together visit this link.


Milk bottle light up monsters are another delightfully simple craft but they do look fabulous all lit up in a dark room. Would be great to decorate a party with.

Simply decorate the front of a milk carton with sharpies and your scary face of your choice. Cut a hole in the back where you can feed through a short piece of battery operated fairy lights and you're done!


I was actually quite surprised how eager the kids were with these toilet roll halloween characters, from mad scientists to dracula and everything in between. All you need is a bunch of paint, some coloured paper, maybe a few other decorative bits and pieces. Lay it all on the table and let the kids go at it!


Of course no Halloween celebration is complete without food. Again the same principle as above, a whole delicious looking banquet of edible decorations were placed on the table, but what everyone did with them was completely up to them.

The more we get into Halloween the more I see why everyone enjoys it so much!

Have you been getting your Halloween on this week?

This post is linked to Expedition Homeschool Halloween Party Link Up

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Halloween ~ Poetry Fun & Writing Activities



This is actually the first year we've done anything with Halloween. I must admit I have been very anti Halloween over the years. However after having spent the last couple of weeks immersed in the topic with the families from our micro school I really had a great deal of fun!


I've wanted a way to go back over some of the poetry the older group worked on earlier in the year. These fun poem templates were perfect!


They were created by a teacher to use in her younger primary aged class and the download comes with lots of helpers to assist younger students in writing a fun poem.


For our group I had them choose one of the poetry types we had already covered, Cinquain, Haiku or the Limerick. From there they were free to write how they wanted about their chosen halloween character.

The download included a Werewolf, Frankenstein, Vampire and a Witch, although no one in this particular group chose the witch to write about.

Some of the group loved this and jumped straight in feet first and a few of them struggled with their poetry. It's not always easy to come up with a poem on the spot, but in the end they all completed their piece.


Thanks to Today In Second Grade for putting this together. To check it out visit her blog on this link.



Prior to having some fun with poetry I covered the history of Halloween with this group of kids. We used a simple read and write activity so I don't have photo's to share in a separate post.

However this mini unit did contain a brief overview of the origins and influences of Halloween, from the Celts, the Samhain festival, Druids, the festival of Pamona and the Christian influence of All Saints Day!

After completing readings everyone wrote their own newspaper article about The History of Halloween.

You can see this mini unit closer over at Mr Educators store on Teachers Pay Teachers by visiting this link.

Are you covering Halloween in any way this year? I'd love to hear about it if you are.

This post is linked at Expedition Homeschool Halloween Party Link Up

Happy Homeschooling
Kylie

Friday, October 9, 2015

France ~ Madeline

We are visiting France with our micro-school friends over the next few weeks so I hope to be able to share a few glimpses of some of what we all get up to.

First off for my group was Madeline with the younger kids.

No visit to France is complete without the reading of Madeline.


I decided to look online for an audio visual as opposed to me reading. In the end I went with this one I found over at You Tube.



I put together a quick and simple sheet for us to chat about the book and for the kids to record some of their thoughts.

You can find the download link for this at the end of the post.


We had some interesting discussions about what life might be like in a boarding school and found it quite funny how Madeline's hospital stay was for ten lengthy days!


I found a cute, simple little paper craft activity to do.

Whilst we coloured our little Madeline's we watched this longer animated version of the book. It's quite cute and pretty funny!


 
 
We only had an hour having fun with Madeline and could have most definitely spent a great deal more time reading about and watching all of her adventures.
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Would you like a copy of our reading response sheet? Please use this link to download a copy for your personal use.

Happy Homeschooling
Kylie
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