The Second Grade Superkids: Happy Halloween!

So I have been boo-ed by Lita Lita @ Learning in Spain and Miss. Nelson @ Run! Miss Nelson's Got the Camera. While I know, I know....I am getting to this a little late...at least it's still October! And I had to make sure to give both of these lovely ladies the credit they deserved in "boo-ing" me ;). Be sure to check out their blogs as well.

So here goes...some of the highlights of our Halloween festivities and activities that maybe you could use if you are continuing your celebration tomorrow...and/or keep in your activity banks for next year!

First, here are two of my favorite Halloween themed stories that we read today in class.

I tied "The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin" by Joe Troiano into math by doing a review of shapes and their characteristics.

"Boo!" by Robert Munsch also comes in Spanish. For some reason, I could not locate a cover of the Spanish version, but we read this one and did a retell with it this morning in Spanish. It's a cute story about a boy whose makeup is so scary for Halloween that he ends up getting mountains of candy as everyone who sees him passes out in fright! Just a fun, quick one to celebrate the day!

During math today we also did this cute activity from Jen @ The Teachers' Cauldron to practice our addition and number grid skills. This was a perfect one for practicing counting down on the number grid to add by 10's!

The kids first fill out the "Mystery Picture" addition sheet by solving all of the addition problems. They then used the key at the bottom of the page to color and decipher their "Mystery Picture" on the number grid page. We had a lot of fun with it! Did you figure out what it is?

Grab your free copy from Jen by clicking here.

Finally, during our Fall Party today, I busted out a quick game of "Four Corners"- Halloween Style! For those of you that have not heard of this ever-so-simple game, here is how it works: First, grab your favorite Halloween cd, and play music for the students to walk around the room to. Whenever you feel appropriate, stop the music. The students must then head to the nearest of the four corners of the classroom. In each corner, I placed a Halloween themed poster with a different title. I also placed the same themed posters on my board with a magnetic spinner in the center. Here is what that looked like:

(I know they aren't pretty colors. We do not have access to color printing in our building...and I am going to be honest and let ya'll know I created these quickly during my planning period today!).

Anywho....after I spun the spinner, wherever it stopped, the students that were in the corner with the correponding poster had to return to their seats. We kept playing until there was only one student left in a corner that had not been called, and this student was deemed out winner! With 27 kiddos it still took less than 10 minutes, and it is such a simple game to explain!

If you would like a copy of the posters I created for free in English or Spanish, click on the image below. Maybe you can use them next year :)! Fonts & Graphics: Kevin & Amanda, Google Images, Creative Clips, and Shery K. Designs.