An Enchanted Childhood~ Daycare: Week 8

We have been asked many times to write up our "lesson plans" so others could use them.  Honestly, we just spend a little time thinking about how we want the "school year" to look and go from there.  We wing-it a lot, doing impromptu things that add to our plans.  I am always amazed that anyone would think what we do is worthy of writing down for others to read, but here it goes!

This year, we are doing "Childhood Classics"--reading great children's books--you know, the kind every child should get to know, and then doing little activities to go with it.

During the week of Halloween, we usually read a few halloween books.  Since one the children's favorite books is Sheep in a Jeep, it was a lot of fun to read Sheep Trick or Treat.

Monday--During CircleTime, we sang Five Little Monsters Jumping on the Bed using the finger puppets.  We also did the cute little "poem"/finger play from many years ago--Five Little Pumpkins Sitting on the Gate.  We read Sheep Trick or Treat.  For CreativeTime, we made pumpkin and ghost magnets.  While the children waited for their turn, they played with playdough.

Tuesday-- We added a couple of library books to our Halloween reading basket: Spot's Halloween and Where is Baby's Pumpkin?  During CreativeTime, the children made awesome paper plate pumpkin masks!  We used leaves that we had gathered on our NatureWalk Monday.   (Thanks Eileen for the "leaf" idea.)

Wednesday-- We continued with the same songs, finger plays, and books.  We then headed over to the table for CreativeTime, where we made our footprint ghosts.  This is the 3rd year we have made these and the moms love to compare their child's feet, from year to year.

Thursday and Friday--Halloween parties!  We started off both days with ghosts (bananas with chocolate chip eyes) and pumpkins (toast cut with pumpkin cookie cutter, covered with jam and chochlate chip eyes, nose, and mouth) for breakfast!  In addition to singing our Halloween songs and reading our Halloween books, we painted little pumpkins--a yearly tradition here at our daycare.  After painting the pumpkins, the children decorated treat bags to hold all their goodies.  With our CreativeTime behind us, we dressed all the children in their costumes, tooks lots of ppictures and then headed off on a hayride down the road to "Mommaw Glenda" and "Poppaw John's" house.  (Friday it rained so we had to be content to party inside.)  Lunch was mummy dogs with oranges and carrots.

 Linked to--

Autumn Blog Hop