Holiday - The Mommy Teacher

Halloween Game {Heads Or Tails}

When we were “Boo’d” the other day, we got some stickers in our little surprise basket that I wanted to do something with, but couldn’t quite put my finger on what that should be.

Then, for some unknown reason…. the following activity popped into my brain….I turned the stickers into a “heads or tails” game with just 5 SIMPLE materials: 2 sheets of stickers, one piece of paper, a marker/sharpie, and a coin bigger than the smallest sticker on your sheet.

I placed a jack-o-lantern sticker on one side of the coin, a ghost sticker on another side of the coin,

and then made a SIMPLE sorting sheet by drawing a line down the middle of the page and one at the top. I place a sticker on either side of the sorting sheet.

I explained to Sean Patrick that we would flip the coin to see if it landed on heads (the jack-o-lantern) or tails (the ghost) and whatever it landed on would get to put that sticker on the chart under the matching sticker.

playing with my sticker template — The next day we played again using the sticker activity printable I made on the computer and I liked it better because it was easier to do 🙂

I showed him one example and then he took over and got the hang of it.

SS Halloween Game I decided to make a printable for this in case you wanted to download it and save it in your files for any teachers, homeschoolers, or for all you organized moms.

As you can see, this halloween printable has other images in case you have different stickers and it has candy corn images in case you want to sort your autumn mix candy instead. We sorted the candy corn and had a blast…. the dog was a little jealous!

He had to color each space the matching color before he could eat each candy corn, and he got a little carried away at the end… maybe it was the sugar high.

Mommy wrote the numbers after he counted each side.

You can also use the other images in this printable to make playing cards for memory or Halloween Go Fish.

If you have younger kids that you would like to do this activity with, you can simply have them sort these items without any of the bells and whistles. For the sticker activity, Just say “Let’s sort the groups of stickers. Can you put ALL of the jack-o-lanterns on this side of the chart under the jack-o-lantern and ALL of the ghosts on this side of the page under the ghost?”

Finally, if you want the download it is just around $1 in my TeachersPayTeachers Store,

OR become a member and get this printable along with ALL of my other printables for just a few dollars more!!

October 24, 2013 by Jessica | 0 comments

Make My Pumpkin

In the spirit of Halloween, I wanted to do an art project with my 4-year-old while my 6-year-old was at school. My middle child loves and cherishes this one-on-one time with Mommy. Jess’ post on Monday inspired us to make our own Jack-O-Lanterns, but I had a different objective in mind.

I was also inspired by a “find the differences” book I was reading with Leyson that has two near-identical pictures side by side, but with subtle differences. Each page asks you to “find (x-amount of) differences” which may be as simple as the omission of an object in the picture or a change of color, shape, size or placement of an object.

The objective of our activity was for my son to be able to both point out and fix the differences between my picture and his picture to make them the same, and also to recreate the picture I created… in this case, a pumpkin.

Materials needed: construction paper, scissors, maybe some glue after the activity 🙂

Mommy Prep: Using orange construction paper, I cut out two large pumpkin shapes, and lots of different sized rectangles*, triangles, circles, squares and other various shapes with brown, yellow and black paper.

*I cut out 4 different types of rectangle stems to bring in some vocabulary to our activity: short, long, thick, thin

IMG_20131021_085735_081 Leyson first had to close his eyes (or cover his face with a blanket because I learned that I can’t trust him to keep his eyes closed) and count to twenty while I arranged the different shapes to make a face on my pumpkin. Apparently, counting to twenty now means omitting numbers 14 and 19, so we will be working on that again soon.

I started off with a simple face. Two circles for eyes, a circle for a nose, a fat, brown rectangle and a U-shape for a smiley mouth.

When he got to 20, he pulled the blanket off of his face, he had to use the remaining shapes to make his pumpkin look just like my pumpkin.

To make the project more challenging in other rounds, I layered some of the shapes such as using smaller circles on top of larger circles for the eyes.

The most difficult part of the activity was when I used only triangles to make a face and he had to figure out which direction the triangles were facing. It’s harder than it looks!

We experimented with all the different things we could learn from making pumpkins:

Feelings/Emotions: We made happy pumpkins, and sad pumpkins, and angry pumpkins, and scared pumpkins… and talked about why each pumpkin was feeling the way they were feeling.

Counting/More or Less: Sometimes Mommy’s pumpkin had 4 teeth, sometimes it had more or less.

Compare and Contrast: “What is different about the nose on your pumpkin and the nose on my pumpkin?” “Do our pumpkins have the same shaped mouth?”

Vocabulary: Colors, shapes, sizes, parts of the face

Spacial Awareness: “Are the eyes close together or far apart?” “If you put the eyes in the middle of the pumpkin, can we fit a nose and a mouth too?”

Phonemic Awareness & Writing: We segmented the sounds in pumpkin /p/ /u/ /m/ /p/ /k/ /i/ /n/… which is pretty hard to do when your child pronounces it like “po’kin” but we wrote the real word on the back of our project.

When you are finished the activity, grab some glue so you can add some Halloween decor to your house!

Who needs to buy decorations from the store, when with a little glue and tape you can make your house ready for any holiday?!

October 23, 2013 by Casey | 0 comments

Don’t Just Pin it – Do it! Jack-O-Lantern Art

Recently in my mom group we were talking about how we are more likely to pin, than to DO the activities with our kids.

I admitted that this was a tendency of mine too but that I had recently committed to make a habit to plan on DOING at least one activity from my Pinterest boards a day… which may mean that I need to pick one the night before to make sure I have what I need.

The activity I’m going to share today isn’t one that I had on my Pinterest Board “October Activities” but it will be added today because it was always one of my favorite activities in the classroom and I had fun doing this activity with Sean Patrick.

I read this book so I could show the kids a jack-o-lantern and we could talk about the colors, shapes, and function of a jack-o-lantern Clifford's First Halloween

(If you do not participate in halloween you can still make this craft asa Fall pumpkin).

First, I pulled an orange sheet of construction paper, a brown sheet of construction paper, a black sheet of construction paper, a yellow sheet of construction paper, a white crayon, and a glue stick…. these materials can vary (if you don’t have one of those colors then COLOR a white sheet of computer paper (that is what I did for the stem of the pumpkin).

Yellow piece of construction paper not pictured.

Next, I drew a pumpkin shape with my white crayon onto the black construction sheet of paper. I drew triangle eyes, a nose, and a mouth that you can fill in with yellow construction paper or leave blank. Great time to talk about shapes 🙂

Then, together the kids and I tore the orange sheet into lots of pieces, and we used the glue stick to cover the inside of the shape on everything that we wanted to be orange.

And, we covered the pumpkin (or jack-o-lantern when you glue around the facial features).

Finally, we filled in the stem with brown, the facial features with yellow, and hung it up on our playroom blinds with a clothespin to take pride in our Jack-o-lantern! (If I did it again I would start with the yellow facial features then do the orange).

We had fun, we accomplished something together, and they “worked out” their little fingers which is always a great way to prime them for writing.

This craftivity would be best for a four and up child in my personal opinion, but we didn’t finish this in one sitting and mommy helped A LOT!

After sharing one of these pics on my Instagram, a mommy teacher friend of mine took this approach….

And I LOVE LOVE LOVE that she used what she had, she made an activity geared toward her girl’s interests, and she inspired me to do this spin on the activity too! Thanks Allie!

October 21, 2013 by Jessica | 1 Comment

Bat-Math Printable

I was inspired by another mommy teacher and finally got my act together and started hanging our Fall activities on the blinds of the playroom and it got me SO motivated to purpose even more seasonal teaching moments.

I am not over-zealous… I purpose one activity a day… and today’s activity was “Bat- Math.” I wanted to give y’all the step-by-step breakdown in case you wanted to print this FREE Bat-Math Printable and have some duh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh da nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh BAT – MATH. Sorry, had to set the tone for this.

The way that my mini bat-math lesson started is funny… $Bat Printable$ I found a VERY simple page with the outline of 10 bats in an Elmo activity book (by the Count) and I thought…

Today, Sean Patrick is going to learn that The LAST NUMBER he says when counting is the AMOUNT of bats that there are on this page. (I know that that is an abnormal thought). That is a common core math standard – that children can simply recognize that the last number they say represents the amount in the group they are counting. (Example: If there are 5 bats on the page then when I count 1-2-3-4-5, I know that there are FIVE bats because it was the last number that I said when I counted the last bat).

I started with too many – I will be honest. The page had 10 bats. He can count to 10 but I wish I would’ve started with 5…. which is why I made this free printable with 5 and with 10 because you know your kiddo and can choose.

First I said “Alright Sean Patrick… today lets cover up each one of these bats with skittles. Each bat gets ONE skittle so that we can count how many bats there are. When we figure out the right number of bats then we can eat that many skittles!” (once again… he normally only gets to eat THREE skittles so I wish I would’ve started with my own printable haha).

He covered up each bat (one skittle on each bat) and then started to count. He counted slow – one number for each skittle which is GREAT, but he miscounted because he didn’t count strategically (he started at the bottom and jumped up and around) so I said “Okay baby, try counting from the top then over, and go to the next line so we can count the right number. “

He tried again and he said “ten” but kept counting.

So I said “That was great counting…. lets try it one more time and when I say STOP, try to remember the number that you said!”

He counted it again and then I said “What was the last number you just counted to?”…. he said “five” haha okay this is great….this is the moment I realized 10 was too high to count a group number, and it was the moment that I realized we could work on this one skill all week.

Then we counted it again and I said “Did you hear yourself count to ten…. watch mommy and listen…. I shouted “10!” when I counted to that number and then said “How many?” and he finally said “Ten!”

I said “YEAH! lets celebrate great counting… eat your treats and then we will give all TEN bats a sticker, then we can color them. Let’s put the stickers on in the same “smart way” to count…. from the top to the bottom.

He was content with coloring just one bat so we glued the “finished” product onto a black sheet of construction paper and hung it up on our “fall art” wall…. (which I will share the play-by-plays of those activities next week).

October 18, 2013 by Jessica | 2 Comments

DIY Peel & Stick Window Decals

IMG_20131013_082342_031 My mother-in-law just did a super fun and easy Halloween craft with the kids (and me…she brought extra supplies because she knew I’d want to do one too!).

We made ghost and pumpkin window peels/decals and decorated the kid’s bathroom for Halloween. We had so much fun doing this super easy craft that I think we might just have to make our own window decals for every holiday!

Materials for Ghost Window Decals:

transparency sheets
white paper
school glue
permanent marker
googly eyes (optional)
nail polish remover

Step 1: Place a blank paper underneath your transparency (easier to see that you are not writing on your table with a permanent marker).

Step 2: Draw your picture onto your transparency using your permanent marker.

Tip: My 6-year-old had the genius idea to TRACE a picture. Look through a few coloring books or print a picture off the computer of a simple shape to trace.

Step 3: Pour a whole lot of glue inside the outline of your picture and use your finger to “paint” the picture.* Make sure the glue is thick and even across your entire picture. It’s ok if the glue goes out of the lines, you can trim that off later.

Step 4: Place your transparencies on a flat surface to dry. You will be finishing your craft tomorrow. When all of your glue has turned from white to transparent, it is dry. (We let ours sit for about 24 hours).

Step 5: Using a small amount of glue, place googly eyes on your ghost. Wait for the glue to dry.

Step 6: Peel off and stick to your window or mirror! (Getting it started to peel off is the tricky part. Try bending the transparency while using your finger nail to lift it from the sheet. Then gently peel it off.)

Step 7: Use nail polish remover to erase the permanent marker from the transparencies and begin the craft all over again!

*To make COLOR decals, when doing Step 3, add a few drops of food coloring to your glue and mix together while you are spreading it. For our pumpkins, we added 4 drops of yellow to 1 drop of red in the glue and mixed it together to make orange.

Another option is to use fabric paints instead of glue, but 1. I love finger painting with glue, and 2. using glue is a cheaper alternative to fabric paint.

If you do this craft with your children, please post pictures to The Mommy Teacher Facebook page!

October 15, 2013 by Casey | 2 Comments