It’s October! I especially enjoy this month now that we have Lane and it only seemed right to begin the week of preschool with some Halloween inspired lessons. And iff you’re kids love candy, I’m sure they will love this lesson plan too!
BOOK OF THE DAY AND STEAM ACTIVITY
The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid Of Anything by Linda Williams
What are you afraid of? With Halloween coming up quick this month, we are surrounded by frightening things. Every time we make a trip to the grocery store we always stop to look at the “spookies” as Lane calls them. He never seems freaked out by the things you’d expect. Nope. He is scared of other kids. My child is more comfortable around dogs and adults. While it’s not really a fear more than it is shyness, it is something that he needs a little extra encouragement to overcome. Kind of like the little old lady in our story.
The little old lady is so sure that she isn’t afraid of ANYTHING, but as a moving pile of laundry accumulates along her path, that changes. By the end of the tale she has run back to her cottage to find safety, yet there’s still a fear of the spooky monster outside. She must confront her fear. She does this by imagining her fear as something else less scary. This reminds me of the third Harry Potter book, the one with the Boggart. This is a practice we can use in real life to limit the control our fear have on us.
Fence Engineers
Our STEAM activity was inspired by the end of our book, and a good start to our weekly theme of farm life. The little old lady envisions her laundry monster as a scarecrow, a useful garden tool in keeping birds and varmints from eating her crop. The other defense she uses for her vegetables is a small garden fence. So we decided to make our own fences from popsicle sticks and playdough.
I started building a fence by using small blobs of playdough to attach the sticks together in typical farm fashion. Lane quickly found a better way to make a fence that he is more familiar with. He laid the playdough in a line on the table and stuck the popsicle sticks in vertically to make a slat board privacy fence. Kids really are so inquisitive.
Supplies Needed
- popsicle sticks
- playdough
SING-A-LONG
Dingle Dangle Scarecrow by The Berry Patch
HANDS ON LEARNING AND WORKSHEET
Carrot Garden Numbers
Lane has gotten pretty good at counting objects, so to focus on written number recognition, we matched numbered carrot sticks. This past summer he loved spending time with Grandma in her garden and picking veggies, especially the carrots. So this was a Pinterest idea we had to do.
Supplies Needed
- empty egg carton
- popsicle sticks
- green and orange markers
- black sharpie
We used an 18 piece egg carton and 18 popsicle sticks. On each stick I drew a simple carrot with the markers and at the bottom I wrote the numbers 1 through 9 with the sharpie, making 2 of each number. I flipped over the carton and stabbed one popsicle stick into each bump, number side down, making sure to mix them up. Then Lane pulled one popsicle stick at a time and laid them on the table, pairing the matches together when he found them. A more advanced version would be a memory matching game and you could swap numbers for letters or even shapes.
Candy Patterns and Scarecrow Shapes
Our next activity was a motor skills booster and can be easily modified to suit your child’s learning level. We finished this portion of our day with a scarecrow shape matching coloring page that can, again, be used in various ways to challenge your student.
Supplies Needed
- table top
- butcher or plain wrapping paper
- marker
- Halloween candy
Spread your paper over a flat surface and tape the ends to secure. Use a marker to draw various objects. We did letters, numbers, shapes and lines. Now take your candy and place it on top of the lines. Make this more advanced by having your child use different types of candy and lining them up in patterns.
Click here for Scarecrow Shape Matching coloring page
CRAFT CORNER
Garden Scarecrow
Going back to our book of the day where the little old lady turns her fear of an enchanted pile of laundry into a useful scarecrow for her vegetable garden, I felt our STEAM fence building activity wasn’t quite enough. So we headed outside to make a real life scarecrow! This was a fun project for the whole family to join in and was another “craft” that involved more than just construction paper and glue sticks. I’m also really interested to see if my dog freaks out on this thing while watch dogging out the window tonight.
Supplies Needed
- long handle garden tools
- cinder blocks
- shirt
- pants or overalls
- shoes
- gloves
- hat
- towel, blankets or pillows for stuffing
- packing tape
We propped up a tall metal rake in the hole of two cinder blocks stacked on top of one another and began dressing it, using tape to secure the clothing. It definitely helps to have 2 pairs of adult hands for this part. To fill out our shirt and pants we stuffed them with beach towels. Then we topped off our scarecrow with the finishing accessories… and a couple rocks. It doesn’t have a head, but it’s an amusing sight nonetheless.
Ember + Pine 