Working and Playing Hard Together

Looking back at this month, I am amazed at how much we’ve done together. We’ve explored the topic of “family” by graphing data regarding family members & pets, looking at American history by developing a timeline based on the lifespan of our oldest living relative, and starting “Family Tree” scrapbooks full of family recipes and more. We’ve celebrated the beginning of Fall season with songs, movement, and art projects too. We enjoyed our family pot luck and a field trip to an apple orchard.

Last Friday we celebrated October’s big holiday with our own home-made Halloween Carnival. The kids arrived in costume and did a costume parade. We had Cinderella, Ariel/The Little Mermaid, Briar Rose, a rock-star-diva, an army soldier, and an evil scientist in our parade.

Our Circle Time featured a singing game “Witches Brew” [which exercised the kids’ language arts abilities (pronoun & imaginative noun substitutions) along with musical development (matching pitch, solo/chorus)]. We also played a movement game with the classical piece by Grieg, “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” We first learned a chant that matched the melodic motifs in the piece. Then the kids took turns being “sneaky people” or “terrible trolls” and took turns acting out their parts as the musical motifs directed the movement. They had no idea they were developing interpretive music capabilities as their game developed into wild frenzy. They absolutely loved this activity and asked to do it again and again and again.

Our chapter in “Ramona the Pest” for this day just happened to be the one title “The Baddest Witch in the World” with Ramona in her own Halloween parade.

Because of the smoky skies (the Esperanza fire) we had to stay indoors all day but we kept busy and happy with some fun cooperative games invented by me and the kids. We finger-painted Halloween icons with black and orange fingerpaint. We pinned tails on the black cat. Instead of bobbing for apples, we played an apple relay game where the kids had to pass an apple back and forth from their own toilet paper roll to their partner’s toilet paper roll without dropping the apple while getting through a tricky obstacle course together. We also made up a cooperative challenge in which the kids as six baby spiders had to make it to the web (across the room) together without breaking the web (three hula hoops) or leaving any others behind. This took quite a bit of problem-solving, but working together they did it!

Now that the skies are clear, perhaps you’d like to do a Sickening Scavenger Hunt, egg yoke relay, and map of the neighborhood (a.k.a. trick-or-treat map) at home with your child today or tomorrow. Let me know if you do!