HALLOWEEN FUN!!!!

Dear Families, Friends and Blog-Followers (!!),

Today was filled with many great opportunities for learning and fun, as photos confirm.

If your Butterflies and Puppies tell you that they colored and played with pasta, they are, indeed, telling the truth!!

Miss Downing and Mrs. Dolham filled a great big aluminum vat with cooked spaghetti and shells and added and mixed food colors into the "Spooky Stew" -- the kids had a fabulous time eating the pasta, making spider webs, and, playing with it, in the sensory table, with and without gloves -- said activities taught science and art and fostered social skills, as well as encouraged sensory experimentation.

As if that was not enough to stimulate their senses, children and adults, alike, wrapped each other up in toilet paper -- ("mummies" or "mommies?") -- when we were finished, we collected the remains and are saving them to mix with water to make "clean mud" -- reduce, reuse and recycle!!!!

Activities also included practicing one to one correspondence, (math), by using foam pumpkin stick puppets and pumpkin seeds and learning to spell Halloween-themed words, (language/literacy), with accompanying pictures, on keyboards.

In addition, Kelly put-up our life-size x-ray, as we told her the names of the bones that we have learned, thus far, and reviewed the list of school rules, which our little friends came up with, yesterday afternoon.

At Circle-Time, Butterflies and Puppies, too, sat on their new circle spots, which they decorated, themselves, and to which Liz added the final touches and laminated.

Mrs. Dolham, again, led the "mystery box" game, reviewed the calendar, and much, much more -- and -- surprise, surprise -- our apple seeds have begun to sprout, thanks to Liz and a good deal of patience!! :)

This week, Kelly added the "big bikes" to our plethora of outdoor riding toys -- thank you!!

We have now read over 85 books, including today's stories -- "Fall Leaves" written by Mary Packard and illustrated by Dana Regan, "Froggy's Halloween" written by Jonathan London and illustrated by Frank Remkiewicz, "Boo" written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Michael Martchenko -- (what a pair!!) -- "A Day with Whisker Wickles" written by Cynthia Jameson and illustrated by James Marshall, "There was an Old Monster" by Rebecca, Adrian and Ed Emberly and "Glad Monster, Sad Monster" written by Ed Emberly and illustrated by Anne Miranda -- I took photos of each of the children with his/her favorite monstrous expression, and, among the most popular were "angry", "scary", "silly" and "loving" -- thank you to all of the teachers, Amy, students from both Lexington and Minuteman Career and Technical High Schools, and, the children, themselves, for reading together and to each other!!

We have pumpkins on our front porch, a new shelf for some of our musical technology and new stalls in the bathrooms -- yahoo!!

Tomorrow, while Miss Downing and Mrs. Goell drive the Butterflies to Wilson Farm, in the School Van, (go Kelly!!), Mrs. Dolham and I will be reading more stories, in the dark, as we did, today, to the Puppies, enjoying a special snack -- (everything's orange?!) -- putting together a skeleton puzzle, decorating paper bats, stuffing ghost bags, perhaps getting glittery pumpkin tattoos, and, doing "tons and tons of fun stuff!!", alongside our friends from the LABB Program -- "Congratulations!!", Katelyn, on your graduation -- (yes -- more goodies!!) :)

Lots of Love from Miss Peacock XOXO