HAPPY HALLOWEEN! At this moment I am sitting on my couch with my feet up, computer on my lap, and looking at pictures from all the great events and activities that took place today.  Halloween is hands-down, my favorite holiday of the year and I wanted to share some of my fun festivities with all of you.  I always begin my day by getting into school early and decorating the classroom with all the different knick-knacks I have collected over the year.  I love the kids reaction's as they walk in the room first thing in the morning.  It takes us a good 15 minutes to actually make it to our morning meeting, but I get a kick out of watching them walk around the room "ooing "and "ahhing" at all the decorations and finding all the hidden surprises. The motion-censored spiders are my favorite.  As the kids go to hang up their book bags three mechanical spiders drop from the ceiling!  Mwwwhahahahaha!

This week we bring our unit on spiders to a close, and we kick of the closing celebration with a final assessment based on our understanding of main idea/details.  To help us do some serious thinking, we hang up our thinking caps, and replace them with our spidie caps.

                                                   

Today we read Arachnid Attack!, and worked with a partner to generate the main idea using details from the text.  For the independent assessment we completed a main idea/detail spider craft.  The students have a ball with this project and at the same time do a superb job of demonstrating their understanding.  We do this by creating main idea/detail spiders.

We add all of these creepy crawlers to our classroom decor.  During our Halloween Party, the parents love to see how their kiddies have contributed to the Halloween ambiance!