Halloween and holidays...

We had our Halloween fun day on Thursday last week - hugely successful and enjoyed by all the kiddies. :) This year we very cleverly planned all our activities for the afternoon so that we could send all the children home immediately afterwards - the sugar highs would be their parents' problem not ours. :)

And if you look at this cookie you will see why a sugar high was going to be a problem!! Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen so much icing on one cookie!!

We split our children into three mixed groups and rotated them through the classrooms. Thankfully I had the craft room so we quietly - and in a relaxed fashion - made symmetrical positive/negative pumpkins and some lollipop ghosts. I had lots of parent volunteers so was able to hand everything over to them and wander around with my camera. :)

                                              

In my team teachers rooms we had the infamous cookie decorating - very loud and messy but again, plenty of volunteers - and the final room had pumpkin carving. Each class has to carve a pumpkin for our annual Halloween fair so we always do this in the afternoon so that parents can help. :) Usually we have plenty of dads but for some reason this year only two moms volunteered for the messiest job of all.

The kids had a lot of fun helping to scoop out the pumpkins and design the faces :) but the moms definitely had to do some tidying up at the end :).

On the Friday I ended up with only 12 children as several of them left early for the holidays so I abandoned all hope of work and we played games instead. We had fall-themed puzzle sheets and a fun movie and we did ONE math activity from a freebie (What's My Shape) I snaffled from Deana at Primary Punch

It was SO much fun. The directions call for the shapes to be put on headbands but in the interests of time I taped or paper-clipped them to the backs of the children.

They then went around asking questions to see if they could identify their shapes. They loved it - eventually I took away their question cards and then the shape cards to see what they could remember and they were awesome.

So we played a team game - the Autumn Leaves versus the Pumpkins. :) Everyone closed their eyes, I drew 2 shapes on the board, one person from each team rushed up and wrote the name of the shape underneath. First person to finish won a point for their team. It was a dead even tie! They know their shapes pretty well! I'll play it all again after our holiday for the benefit of the missing students. :)

So now, I have a blissful week stretching out ahead of me - long days in pajamas, cups of tea, bonding with my doggies... The weather is cooler, the sun is shining - wonderful!!!

I did volunteer to go in and help with the holiday school program on Thursday from 12.30 to 4.30 but I think that will be a lot of fun - oh, and I do need to go in and tidy up the classroom and prepare for next week but for today.... today, I'm going to kick back and enjoy the peace. :)

Happy Monday, all.