Kindergarten Halloween Party

I LOVE holiday parties in class because the kids have the best day ever; however, I am all for easy planning!! I want to enjoy the party too and not be stressed out! These are some ideas of centers I have done in the passed, along with ones that I want to try out! 

When I have a holiday party in class I usually have my room mom take care of the centers/emailing parents for donations, etc. But I do tell my room mom some center ideas and things that I want to see. I have found that when I don't take some control of the holiday parties, my room mom has great ideas, but some aren't age appropriate or some are too short and the party is over too quickly (which then means the kids get wild), etc.

I ALWAYS do centers at my parties. The kids have to stay in their center until the bell rings, then we all switch.  If I don't do centers, some kids rush through the activities and are done with the hour and a half party in twenty minutes. Then what? Centers are MUCH easier, trust me.

One of my favorite Halloween centers is decorating mini pumpkins. The kids love this and it also gives them something to take home! I ask that each child donates a mini pumpkin. Then I purchased the foam stickers from Oriental Trading. They stick VERY well!! You can find one pack HERE. 

 At one center we played Candy Corn bowling.  The kids loved this center (just make sure it is somewhere in the corner where the pins aren't flying everywhere).  You can make this center academic too! HERE is an awesome addition worksheet to accompany the bowling. 

 Now this is an activity I haven't tried yet, but I love it! I think it would be easy and fun! You can purchase the mini play-doh's at Target or even Costco.  I found them on Amazon HERE.  I wound't pre-package this center as a kit. I would leave the play doh, beads, eyes, and pipe cleaners out for children to use. Then, when it is time to clean up, you can stick it in a zip-lock bag for them to take home and use again! This idea is from 'A Dab of Glue' and she offers the printable for free as well!
Another cute and easy center is this pumpkin q-tip painting center. When these dry, I add them into their poetry notebooks. You can grab this freebie HERE.

I like to always have one center that is a 'cooking center'. Here are a couple cooking center ideas!

 Make your own monster cookie. I would buy the cookies pre-made from the grocery store. We use food coloring to dye the vanilla icing and I leave tongue depressors in the icing for kids to use as they spread the icing on their cookie. You can ask parents to donate small tubes of gel icing for decorating and you can find the googly eye sprinkles at the grocery store or on Amazon HERE.

 If you haven't use this cooking activity yet in class during your bat unit, then it is perfect for your Halloween party. Super simple and the kids love it!! Again, I used a small tube of gel icing as the 'glue' for the eyes and the fangs. 

I didn't want to have too much sugar so I had mini water bottles at the center for the kids to have a drink. Just made it a little more fun by adding these bat straws!

I usually have 4 or 5 centers at our holiday parties. When all centers are complete, I gather the kids at the carpet for one whole group game.  This gives my volunteers time to clean the room up while we are all together (calming down). At our Halloween party we play 'pin the nose on the Jack O' Lantern'. I've always made a pumpkin and noses in the passed with construction paper, but I found this one cheap online HERE.  This is SO fun and a perfect way to end the party.

Towards the end of the day we watch a Halloween video or two and say our goodbyes! It really is a calm and fun day...not too much planning and prepping involved, but the kids have a blast!!

Here are some videos we have enjoyed in the past:

Dancing videos:

Monster Moves by Koo Too Kanga Roo

Halloween Stomp

Halloween Freeze Dance

Skeleton Dance

Stories/Shows:

The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

The Berenstain Bears: Trick or Treat

The Berenstain Bears: The Prize Pumpkin

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Halloween Party

Since becoming a mom, Halloween has turned into one of my favorite holidays! They just love all of the 'buzz' around the big day--there are school parties, church parties, neighborhood get togethers, and more all leading up to the big day!!

I have turned to Oriental Trading the past 2 years now for my costumes! I used to shop at Party City or in those pop up Halloween stores, but there were always CRAZY and I could never find the right size.  Boy, shopping online has been so much easier!

 I sat down with both kids and let them choose their costumes.  Their choices usually seem to surprise me haha! Kayla went with Batgirl this year and Brayden went with Pokemon!

 We invited our cousins over for a little Halloween playdate!

Each kid decorated a pumpkin. We did this early on in October so we would be able to enjoy our pumpkins for the month!

 Ahhh! How precious are they? They pumpkin decorating kits were from the Target Dollar Spot!

 Then, we got ready for our Monster Egg Hunt.  This may be a new one (it's pretty much like an Easter egg hunt), but the kids loved it! 

 They ran all around the house searching for their monster eggs! Florida is just too hot still to hide the eggs outside!

 Then they counted their eggs up!

Inside the eggs there were stickers and candy. Juliet decided to add her stickers onto her pumpkin too!

 Then it was cookie decorating time! I use these trays for all of my crafts and cooking projects with the kids. It definitely helps with the mess and they can just go straight into the dishwasher! I bought these trays on Oriental Trading as well. 

 Looks sugary...must be good!

 Love what Savanna did! They look like owl eyes! 

I am always down for any excuse to get our cousins over or neighborhood friends over! We can't wait to have a Thanksgiving play date soon too!!

October Centers Are Up and Running! [All About Bats Unit and Lesson Plans]

I can't believe that it is already October...yet alone the second week of October! Time is flying by (as always)!

This month we are learning all about bats.  I always start our unit off with our Word Splash.  This is what we use to teach vocabulary during our non-fiction units.  The first day of our unit I read one vocabulary word out at a time, I let the students raise their hand to tell me what they *think* that word means, then I call a student up to 'splash' the word onto our Word Splash!  I don't tell the kids what any of the words mean.  As we read our non-fiction books throughout the unit, we will learn the meanings of each word. 

 If students hear a word as I am reading they will put their thumb up. Then, when I finish reading that page we will stop and discuss the word.  After we discuss the meaning, I move the word to the far left side of the Word Splash so that we can review it daily. 

After I finish reading a non-fiction bat book, we 'turn and talk' to our partners to discuss any new knowledge.  My kids are trained to ask each other, 'what did you learn today?' or 'do you have anything new to add to our KWL?'.  After they discuss, I gather their attention and we add all new info to our KWL.

We label a bat together. I laminate this anchor chart and use velcro to label the bat.  This way I can use this same anchor chart year after year!

We had a lot going on during centers last week! My students are moving on to CVC words now (I do have one group still on letter sounds).  These Batty CVC Words are from my October Word Work pack.  The students love them and they are always so engaged with magnetic letters.

The Batty CVC Words come with a 'helper card'.  This way if students are stuck on a letter sound, they can look at their 'helper card' for some assistance.  These cards help make this center totally independent so I can be running my reading group without any interruptions. 

In the writing center last week we had list writing.  We also worked on labeling. 

One of our pocket chart centers was building sentences.  We have been working on our sight words and color words since the second week of school.  My students love using the pointer and reading the sentences to each other when they are finished.  They love playing 'teacher'.

Instead of writing the room, we counted the room!

 They LOVE walking around the room with clipboards looking for their cards.  I must say, they are super quiet and focused too!

 Awesome work! One-to-one correspondence and writing numbers (these are two of the skills we are currently working on in our math series right now too).

I still have students that need to work on number formation.  So we played Brilliant Bat Numbers. Students rolled the die and traced the number rolled.  We worked on writing our numbers from top to bottom.

They have also been working on 'stretching out' words.  They did 'Batty Beginning Sounds' and when they were finished, flipped it over for 'Batty Ending Sounds' (using the same cards). 

Another beginning sound magnetic center...have you tried magnetic letters in your room yet?  Best center ever!

I leave these candy corn letter/letter sound cards out as an early finisher activity in October.  My students love them! 

A little bit of a harder skill still, but my students are getting it, is matching numbers with number words.  Some of my students had to use our number posters for help, which is totally fine!

 Another early finisher activity that I have out in October are these play-doh mats. My students love play-doh!

The activities in this post can be found from various packs on TpT. 

October Math Centers

October Word Work Centers

All About Bats Unit

If you would like to try a math center activity, you can try one for free by clicking on the image below.

You can also see all of my lesson plans for this unit by clicking on the image below.

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Halloween Party [Planning]

This year our Halloween party falls on a half day of school so we are going to start our party first thing in the morning with some pumpkin fruit cups and yummy monster donuts!

I ordered these cute pumpkin cups from Oriental Trading.  They are pretty big and can fit a good portion for each student.  We are going to fill them with assorted fruit, but they would be great for popcorn if you're doing an afternoon party!

LOVE these donuts! I have said I wanted to do these every year since seeing them on Pinterest.  Can't wait for the kids to see them!

Our school allows our room moms to ask for a $5 donation from each child for the Halloween party.  This is obviously optional, but with the money we are going to purchase a small pumpkin for each child.  Then, I ordered these cute pumpkin decorating kits from Oriental Trading for the students to use.  There are TONS of different options--faces, bats, witches, cats, etc.  They are all foam stickers so they are super easy to assemble and stick very well!

 While I was shopping on Oriental Trading I came across these cute pumpkin boxes.  The box comes with the foam stickers and directions. I am all for easy and fun at my parties so I thought this would be great! It's not messy and it is a cute keepsake for the kids to take home!

Some of the other centers that I have planned are:

-Painting Fall Suncatchers (from Oriental Trading)

-Making popcorn 'spooky hands'

-Make a Halloween foam picture frame (a class mom is going to take our picture in our costumes, get them developed for us that day, and we will add them into the frames-SO nice!)

Then, I had to order this pin the nose on the pumpkin game! My students had to much fun at the beginning of the year playing this at the end of our Monster Unit, that I just had to play it again with them! We will play this at the end of our party as a whole group so that my parent volunteers can start cleaning the centers up!

On a different note, did you know Oriental Trading had Halloween costumes?  I would have never thought of looking there, but I must say, their costumes are awesome!! They shipped unbelievably quickly and we have been playing with them ever since! Why wait till Halloween?

We have Flash and Shopkins Cupcake here!

 And I just had to order this Princess Lea costume for my niece who loves StarWars! She was actually going to see Disney on Ice a week or two ago and said she knew exactly what princess she would wear to Disney on Ice...Princess Lea! (not quite Disney, but we can go with it!)

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Halloween Fun with Oriental Trading

My kids LOVE Halloween and they have been talking about their costumes for weeks! We have four parties a year, one of which is a Halloween party. Oriental Trading has some of the cutest Halloween decorations and some great Halloween games!

I let my kids test out some of our Oriental Trading games during our fun Friday.  I think this made them even more excited for our party!

I ordered candy corn bowling...how fun is that?!

 I am thinking that I will have to add a little bowl of candy corn at this center.  Maybe they can eat as many candy corns as pins they knock down?

 We are also going to make a delicious bat snack!

So I ordered some cute bat straws to use at our cooking activity center.

 Always a party favorite...pin the nose on the jack o'lantern! My kids were all dying to test this out!

 Almost perfect on her first try!

 I ordered some Halloween goodie bags for all of the kids as well.  I couldn't resist these cute patterns!

 At their Halloween party there will be a little goodie at each center.  When they finish their center they can 'Trick or Treat' and add their treat into the bag.

 I also ordered these bat lanterns. I LOVE them!! We are learning about bats for the next couple of weeks and these make a perfect, fun, addition to the classroom!

 I ordered 6 total and they were super easy to assemble and hang!

 I think this one may be my students favorite center.  I ordered pumpkin decorating kits for each child.  

 The pumpkins come out adorable!!

Oriental Trading is definitely the best spot to get your party decor and games! They also have lots of treats for goodie bags! 

Oriental Trading is actually doing an amazing giveaway that ends today, so make sure to enter below!