Halloween

I came back from a teacher training and a parent had decorated outside my door with this really cool pumpkin.  

 This year for Halloween, my class got to carve Jack-O-Lanterns (with the help of parents).  The students were placed in groups of two and three (I had that many parents and pumpkins volunteered) and they designed what they wanted the pumpkin to look like when it was carved.  They then asked the parent if it was something they could do easily.  This was good practice on compromise and working together for them.  After the parents cut the top off, the students had to pull out all the seeds and stuff from the inside.  While the parent carved, the students separated the seeds from the strings.  Some of the pumpkin seeds were kept and I took them home and cooked them for the students.  The students loved eating them the next day!  Also, I took all the seeds from one pumpkin.  I cleaned them and the next day we counted them.  We would place 10 seeds in a little solo cup.  Then we stacked 10 solo cups together.  We placed the stacks of 10 solo cups under a chart that said hundreds, the leftover solo cups under the tens, and the extra pumpkin seeds that didn't add up to 10 under the ones.  We are learning place value in first grade so it was a great math activity.  Here are what the pumpkins looked like when they were done.

Here are some other activities that other classes did for Halloween.

These students learned about how a pumpkin grows and then put it together themselves.  

These students learned bat facts and made a bat out of a small paper bag. Their fact is under their bat.    

My class also made spiders.  I thought I took pictures of theirs hanging up, but I guess I didn't.  Here is what my example looked like:

I gave the students different numbers depending upon their current skill level in math.  The students had to find 8 different ways to make that number.  They could use addition, subtraction, tally marks, etc.  This is one of the standards for math in first grade.  They traced a body pattern onto black, brown, or tan construction paper.  They cut out their own legs from the leftover paper.  I am thinking of making this a game students can play during centers or math rotations next year.  They will pick a spider body.  They will then have to find the 8 legs that match it.  The legs will have addition and subtraction problems.