Hedley’s Haunting Halloween! (Part 2)

So now you know all about our Witches Walk, but that was really just the climax of weeks of Halloween themed work in many of our class groups.

As with our usual themes we like to use the Montessori and the national curriculum to scaffold and inform our work plans. Using these tools we make the learning fun and natural for our students. Allowing imagination, art, writing, observation and practical skills to intertwine our projects and bring them to life….. or “back to life” in the case of some of our Halloween crafts! 🙂

In the big school, Junior Infants had lots of spooky work taking place. Montessori practical life staples of spooning, sieving and pouring took on a new dimension with the addition of spiders and witches fingers, and other creepy cuties in the sand, water and rice. Lots of treasures to be found kept the students returning to the shelves for the work. You may ask why we have shelf work like spooning and sieving and pouring in a junior infants class. This work promotes hand-eye coordination, concentration, fine motor skills and the all important pincer grip for correct pencil holding. This strengthens hands for writing, eyes for reading and minds for further work. Changing this work often keeps the students interest and so further expands their developments in these key areas.

Four Cats or Four Pumpkins?

Another addition to the class activities was Cackling Counting! Number recognition, counting, pattern building, gluing and lots of fine motor skills combine to make a really fun individual learning activity.

Where shall I pin the pelvis?

Of course not everything is best learnt on your own, and Junior Infants work very well together on the Pin the Bone on the Skeleton.

Something else the Junior Infants are very proud of is their Witch and Pumpkin Art. Free Painting, stenciling, gluing, crafting and layering were techniques all put to scarily good effect on the halls and walls of Haunted Hedley Park! (Click each image to make it bigger… don’t be scared now!)

Senior Infants were bubbling up some devilish delights of their own. Again the marriage of the two curricula with a pinch of Hedley Park Magic, saw the children using thier phonogram work to put the Boo, Zoom, Broom and Spook into their “oo” phonogram.

They built a Dracula’s Castle, haunted by ghosts and many many vampire bats. This tied nicely into the end of their autumn hibernation theme with the study of bats.

The bats are sleeping!

Of course no truly scary art display could be without a portrait of the infamous SnuggMonster! I hope he doesn’t come after me! 🙂

Rounding up Senior Infants Halloween Work display, some frighteningly good handwriting!

Finally, the entire big school got involved in some pretty spectacular crafting and baking! The reception area planting took on a scary air with miniature witches hats, ghost lanterns and pumpkin lights!

They constructed a creaky haunted mansion from card……

And not to be forgotten…. the sweet treats (for eyes and mouths)

Ghoulish Cookies!

Eating the Cookies!

Icing the Cookies!

Haunted House Cake!

Spookily Spectacular!

I think you’ll agree the Junior and Senior Infants, with help from the rest of their big school friends are a talented bunch!