What a witchy week we had!  Witches on broomsticks were soaring around the playground, cackling delightedly as they flew through the leaves, past the potion makers, and between the balancers.Monday artists studied the Swiss German artist Paul Klee (pronounced Klay), whose colorful surrealist artwork made use of lines and shape.  We examined many of his most famous works, including Fish Magic, Cat and Bird, Twittering Machine, and Fire Evening.  We used Castle and Sun as the inspiration for our colorful shape art, creating works titled Fish in the Sea, Daddy’s Bed, The castle and the Hungry Caterpillar, etc.
In celebration of Halloween, we read lots of Halloween stories, including Room on the Broom, Inside a House that is Haunted, Halloween, and The Little Old Lady who Was Not Afraid of Anything, and sang our Halloween songs; The Ghost of John, Stirring Our Brew, and Five Little Pumpkins.  We also did the Hokey Pokey using the names of the bones in our skeleton – the phalanges, patella, pelvis, ribs, vertebrae, clavicle, scapula, and skull.
On Halloween day the children who chose to do so arrived in costume and celebrated with a variety of Halloween themed activities.  They tossed worms and rats into a cauldron, made loud sounds by running over bubble-wrap, got bare feet stuck on sticky paper, scooped seeds and pulp out of a pumpkin, created jack-o-lantern faces.  We had fun mixing potions (the most desired activity of the day) with Lyn’s mom, Suzy, who came to spend soand me time with us.Mr. Bond came to hang the bird-feeders with us.  The children went out with their group to fill the feeders with seed then hang them from the tree.  The children helped hold the rope while Mr. Bond raised the feeders, then we all stood back to help decide when it was level.  We noticed that there were seeds on the ground under the feeders on Thursday, and discovered a hair on the feeder, which we determined was from a squirrel rather than a bird.  We are hoping for some birds to come before the squirrels make off with all the food!
We finished our morning off enjoying all the tasty snacks that families sent in, then ran off all our energy on the playground.  Thank you so much to everyone who contributed a treat!Thursday morning Zeanny introduced the Mexican holiday Dia de Muertos (The Day of the Dead).  We watched a short clip from the film Coco, then Zeanny showed us how to make Papel picado garlands by folding and cutting tissue paper.  She told us about sugar skulls and showed how they are decorated with flowers and bright patterns.  The children then had the opportunity to make their own papel picado garlands and create a colorful sugar skull mask.During music with Susan, she introduced the glockenspiel, which the children will get to play for the winter performance.  We then ordered the hand bells from low to high, taking turns ringing and comparing them to put them on the scale where they belong.  Some good listening was required to determine which were higher and lower!For Friday science Susan introduced the four cardinal directions (North, South, West, East) and the use of a compass rose.  She explained that a compass will always point North, as our Earth is a giant magnet.  They played a game where they took turns with the compass and friends moved to different coordinates, then they had fun exploring with magnets.