When Halloween rolls around, I like to try activities that channel the children's eagerness for some fun but still touch on something informative and, yes, maybe even academic. I have traditionally taught origami related to Halloween, showing students geometry concepts while folding ghosts and goblins. This year, we made greeting cards with black cats. It's a neat opportunity to emphasize how to follow directions, and to develop spatial awareness and manual dexterity (folding paper may sound easy at first, but it can be quite challenging). For instructions on how to make your own origami cat, visit Pink Stripey Socks. Here are a few samples of our greeting cards (click to see full view): Feeling particularly ambitious this year, I decided to incorporate a little science as well. On Pinterest, I found an activity called "Frankenworms," which was extremely cool! All it requires is some thinly sliced gummy worms, a solution of baking soda and water, and some vinegar in a tall glass to make the gummy worms come alive. The gummy worms needed to be soaked in the baking soda solution for at least 15 minutes before being placed in the glass of vinegar. (To see detailed instructions for making Frankenworms, visit the site Playdough to Plato.) As the students excitedly watched their gummy worms wriggle and writhe, I explained how the baking soda solution was a base and the vinegar was an acid. When the gummy worms had soaked up enough baking soda solution and were placed in the glass of vinegar, it caused a chemical reaction (carbon dioxide bubbles), therefore causing the gummy worms to float. Here is a moment I captured of our dancing gummy worms: Quite honestly, I think these activities can be done year-round! Many thanks to the room parents who brought in the supplies for the science and origami activities, and for coming in to help the students. Your help was invaluable and made for a fun and smooth learning time for Room 17.
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I'll be perfectly honest, I was never a fan of Halloween. However, as I teacher, I capitalize on the idea of Halloween as much as I can and use it as an opportunity to spice up my instruction and pique students' interest. One of my primary vehicles is through literature, and I shared some of my favorite books, both funny and spooky, in a previous post. I also include poetry as well, and during the month of October Room 17 had fun memorizing and reciting the traditional "In A Dark, Dark Wood" and "I'm Not Scared!" by Karen Baiker. Practicing these poems develops fluency in reading and confidence in speaking in front of an audience. Something wonderful happened a couple weekends ago when I happily rediscovered some material from my old lesson plan files. It was a copy of an excerpt from Shakespeare's Macbeth, the witches' chant "Double, double, toil and trouble." I used to give this to fourth graders to memorize, and I thought, why not try it with my 2nd graders? I gave a very brief and general summary of the Macbeth story, and concluded by sharing film composer John Williams' rendition of "Double, double, toil and trouble" from the movie "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." You can listen to this catchy and delightfully wicked song here: We later used this goodie from Shakespeare as inspiration for writing our own recipes for magic potions. Besides this piece of music, I draw on other music that has long been associated with Halloween, including "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saëns and "Toccata and Fugue in d" by Johan Sebastian Bach. "Danse Macabre" was a particular favorite this year, and we had a devilishly good time doing some impromptu writing while listening to it. We even got to dance to it, thanks to our wonderful dance instructor, Ms. Devon Wall, who taught us how to freeze into all sorts of marvelous shapes with our bodies based on a broom, a trick-or-treat bag, a witch's hat, and a jack-o-lantern. Of course, there must be visual art in the mix. Students used chalk pastels to make spider web drawings and the following week, pumpkin patch landscapes with oil pastel: We wrapped up our Halloween funfest by making origami ghosts. They were deemed "simple" on the YouTube video where I learned it, but was quite a bit more complicated for my 2nd graders. Even so, they still found it engaging and, despite a bit of frustration, seemed determined to get all the steps down. Thankfully, I had two parent volunteers who were able to help the children with the trickier folds. The bubbling excitement from the students from all these activities is quite contagious. It almost made me like Halloween . . . almost!
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