Pumpkin 'Picking' For ABC's!

While scouting Pinterest for some fun fall ideas, I stumbled upon this ABC center idea shared by Little Miss Glamour Goes To Kindergarten

I loved the idea of the kids pumpkin 'picking' for letters but we have only covered 13 letters so far, so I had to make my own printable

so that I could make sure they were working with and practicing the letters and sounds we have covered so far.

I haven't decided if I am going to have them use BINGO daubers to mark the letters they 'pick' and ID

 OR print the sheet on orange cardstock/laminate and have them use candy corn to cover the letters

and then I came across these foam shapes and Halloween themed erasers I had in my October bucket

that I could use too!

I am also toying with the idea of giving them connecting cubes and having them stack the cubes as they pull the same letter to count and see which letter they pulled the most.  

(It would also make a great 'partner game' using it as a 'BUMP'-type activity!)

As I was making it I thought 'I really should have a follow-up/extension activity for my early finishers' (and those that are ready for a bit more of a challenge) so I made some letter mats

They will 'pick' from the pumpkin, ID the letter (and sound) and see if it goes with any of the pictures they have on their mat (or have all the mats out on the table and they could find the one it goes to).

After they place the magnetic letter on the mat they then use a dry erase marker (or crayon- LOVE THEM!) to practice writing the letter

This would be a great way to differentiate for different learners too- the pumpkins of letters would be on the table to share, yet different students could be working on different skills!  You could even challenge them to ID the ending sound!

AND even better...these mats could be used for anytime during the year because they are not seasonally based!  Put letters in other seasonal buckets and containers to continue practicing throughout the year!

And as I finished printing all of my mats and prepping my center for next week, I thought...'I bet there are other teachers out there that also found this pin but couldn't use the printable 'as is' because of letters they have covered/not so far' SO I made the printable editable so that you can make it to match what your students are working on!

It will open in PowerPoint.  Simply click in the text box and type the letters you need!

I used KG Red Hands font- it is free to download for personal use.

You can use whatever font you are comfortable with and/or have access to!

WORKING ON SIGHT WORDS (or CVC, CVCe, etc):

Type words on the printable and then cut up some words to throw in the pumpkin (or write words on foam pumpkin or seasonal cut-outs)!

Kids pull the word, read it, find it on the printable and mark it- just as they would do with the letters!

Like the picture/letter mats too?  No worries- I included them in the FREE DOWNLOAD too!

So all you need to do is grab some:

*plastic pumpkins (or witch cauldrons!) (I found mine at Dollar Tree)

*magnetic or foam letters

*daubers, candy corn, themed confetti, themed foam shapes, themed erasers, and/or connecting cubes

*free printables 

and you will be all set for a fun ABC Center for next week!

Want to remember this for next year?  Here is a pin:

And if you are still searching for some Halloween fun for next week, you can find some rhyming activities, emergent readers, craftivities, read/count the room, playdough mats, math printables and more in my TpT Store via the 'Halloween' custom category!

Hope you have a 'spook'-tacular week!

Be sure to swing by on Thursday to read all about what I will be putting up for this week's freakyfriday $1 deal- only 2 more weeks of deals!

Until next post,

We Went 'Batty!'

This week we learned all about...

BATS!

This was the first year I really dove into a unit on bats and boy did we have fun...and learn a lot!

There were several books I used this week- both fiction and informational- about bats!

Here are a few we used to learn about bats:

And a few others that we used for read alouds and/or as mentor texts for Readers and Writers Workshop:

(BTW I checked and all of the titles above can be found on Amazon if you, or your local library don't have them!)

As much as I would have LOVED for my kinders to try hanging upside down, I am not that adventurous, so I had them lay on the floor, wrap their 'wings' around themselves and I stood over their heads!  We also practiced 'flying' like bats and..of course...tried out our screeching!

We charted what we learned on a huge bat 'can, have, are' chart:

The first time we wrote on it I used purple and then after reading a few more books and watching some videos we added what we learned with the orange marker.  I did this to show them how authors can add to their pieces as part of our Writers Workshop lesson one day.

We also used interactive writing to label the parts of a bat:

What I LOVED was that my kinders were EAGER to add other parts to the bat that I did not originally have on it...

Including...

fingers and its thumb....

AND..my favorite...

REAL FUR! (aka pulled pieces of brown burlap that I had in my craft closet!)

I put it together in this collage so that you could pin it as 1 image to reference later on!

We used some fun songs and learning videos I found online this week too!

The first up is Bats, Bats, Bats!  It is a fun song with great real photos of bats!  The tune is catchy!  My kinders loved it!

The next taught all about echolocation- which my kinders LOVED saying!

The last one is from PBS Kids.  It is a bit long and better for grade 1 but has some interesting bat facts.  My kinders started to lose interest after a bit..and just wanted 'the singing bat movies' back!

But that was not the end of our bat learning and fun!

Our 'Poem of the Week' was from DeeDee Wills' Poetry Pack- the October Poetry Stations- called 5 Little Bats:

Our sight word this week was 'the' so we found it with highlighting tape.

I also had a 'bat snatcher' each day who stood near the pocketchart as we read it and 'snatched' a bat each time we got to the line 'One flew out to find a snack...' until all the bats were gone.  

I wanted a fun display for our bat fact chart and interactive writing but needed a little something more!

I came across this pin for a bat tracer:

but decided to add the kids faces to the bats rather than the googly eyes!

After they cut out the bat, I glued on their face and cut around the ears.  I folded the wings and put a staple in the middle (see below).

Each child wrote a bat fact and I 'hung' their bat from their fact:

This bat fact was inspired by the 'Poem of the Week!'

So proud of her spacing and sound spelling!

They LOVED to write about the bats sucking blood!

And once all were hung we had a...

We learned that bats are not really blind...they just have a hard time seeing in the dark!  But we talked about how hard it would be for a bat to see teeny tiny writing...what could a bat use??

MAGNIFYING GLASSES!

So we tried out a new 'I Spy' type of activity using a bat theme:

We use 'Fundations' to teach letters, so we have covered t,b,f,n,m,i,u,c & o so far.

So I hit those letters (6pt font) in the bat picture and then put pictures of items that start with those letters on the bottom of the page.  They had to...

and then... 

I had them 'x' each letter as they found it on the bat so that they would know which ones were already used.  They loved it!

Want to try it out with your kiddos?

Here it is for free:

Just right click on the image and copy it into a new document or save it as a picture and insert it into a new document!

Here is the bat fact paper I used too, if you want that:

Next week they will do a similar activity independently in Phonics Center, but our theme will be pumpkins, so I created this one for them to do and added the 2 new letters (a and g) that we will learn next week into the mix:

Feel free to use this one, as well! 

There is so much more I would have loved to do with bats but we merely ran out of time!  Next week we are onto pumpkins!  I have a bunch of fun things planned...be sure to stop by again!

I will be blogging on The Primary Pack on Thursday 10/24- my first post!  I'd love for you to swing on by- planning a 'dough' lot of fun and some freebies!

Until next post,