I wanted to share with you some of my favorite October resources for TK and Kindergarten. October is such a magical month because you can incorporate all things spiders, pumpkin, and my favorite: SPOOKY FINGERS!
October Academic Sensory Bins are my FAVORITE way to incorporate some hands on, tactile, play by using sensory bins in the kindergarten classroom. You can see in the photo below, I am not using a "bin," rather a spider web bowl I found at the Dollar Store! I added some spooky fingers, spiders, and little erasers to the basket to give the students little festive items to touch and explore while also accomplishing an academic skill.
I use sensory bins just like I do any center game or task card activity. I put all of the cards in the bin (spider web basket), then the students pull a card to complete the task on the recording sheet!
I use sensory bins during center rotation time or for early finishers. These activities are always some sort of skill they are reviewing and can complete independently. The idea is that the students can work alone or with a partner, while I am working with a small group or assessing a student one-on-one.
Learn more about
October Academic Sensory Bins in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store! I do have a different sensory bin resource for each month, be sure to check out the bundle if you are interested in incorporating sensory bins all year long!
October Flip Book Bundle is a great way to practice reading and writing independently. My favorite part of my flip books are that there is an interactive component to each book. Once the students take ownership in being the author, they then can master fluency skills by reading and RE-READING their book to themselves, to a partner, or to the class!
I created flip book companions to go with some of my favorite Halloween Read Alouds. What I do is I read the book to the class, then we complete the flip book. There are two ways to assemble:
1. You can pre-assemble the flip book ahead of time. (I only do this when I have a parent volunteer.)
2. The students assemble the books AFTER they have written in the book and colored. I have everyone order the pages as I give slow instructions and then staple for them once they have the pages ordered!
Is anyone else obsessed with Target's Dollar Spot erasers but run out of ideas of how to use these (non-erasing)erasers?! ha!
I was playing with my son and I noticed him stacking the erasers and counting how high they could go! This made me realize how perfect it would be to pair with my
Monthly Number Cards!
I have little cards for every month, they are super cute and go with that month's theme or holiday! I typically use them for sequencing, number writing, etc.! But they are SO perfect to pair with those millions of seasonal erasers that you have shoved in your cabinet!
The most rewarding part of teaching kindergarten is watching my young learners enter the year learning letters and leave writing multiple sentences. During the year there is this constant balance of trying to create meaningful independent practice opportunities that meet the needs of ALL of my students. Some students are building words while others are writing sentences. This challenge is what made me create my
Fall Words and Sentences resource.
This resource allows all of the students to be working on the same topic, in this case it is pumpkins, but be working at different levels.
You can see that in both printable they are reading, tracing, finding, coloring, writing, and cut and pasting. This allows them jump from the word printable to the sentence printable with ease because they are familiar with the format!
My absolute favorite fall topic is teaching about the life cycle of the pumpkin! We use these
pumpkin flip books to talk about the life cycle! The students write about a different stage on each page. This comes in 3 different versions so you can differentiate among your learners:
-color and read
-color and write
-read and draw!
This makes the perfect fall bulletin board!
