Halloween Word Wall

Here's our Halloween word wall!

For this word wall I for some reason really didn't want to see the brown cork of the board like always, so I stuck a black piece of fabric to it first before putting the words up. The words I did on orange paper with a black Sharpie, and then cut out with funky scissors.

The words are:
- Halloween
- October
- Orange
- Ghost
- Spooky
- Bat
- Trick or Treat
- Vampire
- Carve
- Mummy
- Frightful
- Candy
- Spider
- Coffin
- Costume
- Jack o lantern
- Skeleton
- Cauldron
- Witch
- Goblin

Have a Great Educational Fire Safety Week

October 4th through the 10th is Fire Safety Week! With the ideas from this post you and your kids are sure you have a fun and informative week learning about fire safety.

First I like to put up a word wall when we do a "theme" or "unit" in our home school, and we always do our fire safety theme during fire safety week. 

I have "Fire Safety Week" on orange paper as the title and then the other labels in orange as well: "signs, use, and do" as in signs of the fire, what firemen use and what firemen do. There's the "fireman" word that I have up there that I printed from a community helpers word wall download. Then all the yellows are what goes with each label. For signs we have fire, alarm, and smoke. For use we have hat, water, hose, fire engine, ladder, hydrant, extinguisher. For do we have put out, and save.

We checked out some great books for this week from the library, fiction and nonfiction:
-  At the Firehouse by Anne Rockwell
- Fire Safety by Lucia Raatma
- Firefighter Frank by Monica Wellington
- Firetrucks by Peter Brady

The book about Fire Safety is a really great one full of tips to get discussions going with your kids about how you guys can avoid fires in your home, and what to do if there is a fire. This sets the stage to practice fire drills in your home, and the stop, drop and roll.

(new watermark over my old blog name)

There are many more exciting things to do for Fire Safety Week than just have a word wall and read books though. Here is a firefighter sensory bin we have done in the past


One of the very best things you can do is tour a fire station. Call your local fire station and ask if you can arrange a tour for your kids, or make it a group thing and go with a group of parents and children. The tour we went on the firemen were really good with the kids and the tour was informative and fun, then they gave all the kids firefighter hats and coloring books. You can even bake cookies with your kids to bring them to the firemen.

  

Other things to do:
- Shape Firetrucks from Things to Share and Remember, we've made these before!

- Make a firefighter craft from Moms Town Toronto

- Do a fire safety smoke crawl and play some games too like Lalymom 

- Five Little Firefighters Poem and Craft from JDaniel4's Mom 

- Do this F is for Fire craft from I Can Teach My Child 

St. Patrick's Day Word Wall

As always, we do a word wall for the upcoming holiday, and in this case that is St. Patrick's Day.

I think it turned out pretty cute, although I am in no way a good shamrock drawer! I tried for my daughter though, but the most important part is the literacy aspect and learning the words, being in a print rich environment, etc.

I wrote the words on index cards with a green Sharpie:
- gold
- Irish
- St. Patrick
- shamrock
- green
- Blarney stone
- jig
- rainbow
- trifolium
- clover
- pot of gold
- luck
- harp
- march
- leprechaun

Then I used a different green marker to draw/color a shamrock on each card, and used other markers to make a rainbow on the "rainbow" card.

Pumpkin Word Wall

Fall is here! And so are all the delicious pumpkin foods. Here's our Pumpkin Word Wall to kick off our Pumpkin Unit.

The words were:
- seeds
- beta-carotene
- fruit
- jack o lantern
- orange
- heirloom
- Fall
- pie
- North American

as you can see all the words pertain to pumpkins and do their job of teaching about them when I comment on the words as I have my daughter repeat them.

The pumpkin cut outs were a pack from Dollar Tree last year!

Weather Word Wall

We've been studying weather recently for tot school. Here's the word wall I made to go along with the unit.

I thought it was so cute. To make a word wall similar to this you'll most importantly need a bulletin board. Other specifics I used:
- light blue construction paper for the title
- white index cards for the words
- a black Sharpie to write everything
- thumbtacks of course to put the words up
- cloud scissors

What made it was so cute was how all the weather words looked like clouds thanks to the cloud scissors. The words were:
- Accumulation
- Atmosphere
- Breeze
- Climate
- Cloudy
- Dew
- Drizzle
- Drought
- Fair
- Fog
- Flood
- Forecast
- Front
- Frost
- Gust
- Humid
- Jet Stream
- Lightning
- Precipitation
- Pressure
- Temperature
- Thunder
- Rain
- Snow
- Wind

Some more good words to add would be Fahrenheit, Celsius, Kelvin, sleet, hail, icicles, climate, things like that.

My daughter and I went over these words a lot and she really enjoyed learning about them. She'd want my explanation/definition of each of the words. Then I could ask her questions about them and she'd answer. It was a very informative word wall when using my prior knowledge to weather, and things we learned in books together during this unit.

Frog Word Wall

This Frog Word Wall is great to put up on your bulletin board during a pond animals/habitat theme. And it's super cute!

The Dollar Tree has such cute cut outs of things and I picked up these frog ones before we made this. Then I used a few different colors of index cards, a Sharpie, and scissors to make the words. The words were

• Toad
• Frog
• Hop
• Ribbit
• Pond
• Amphibian
• Lilly Pad
• Tadpole
• Long tongue
• Fly
• Croak
• Green

You can read these words with your child and discuss them and how they apply to frogs. You can talk about how toads and frogs are "cousins" and how they are both amphibians. Then you can talk about the things they do like hop, ribbit, and croak. You can both practice your ribbits and croaks, and even your hopping like a frog. My daughter loves doing this frog yoga pose. 

The habitat words are important because you're probably focusing on a pond theme. You can discuss how there are lilly pads in the pond that the frogs go on and how they catch flies with their long tongues.

What Makes a Fairytale Word Wall

We usually do word walls on our bulletin board for each theme that we do, so this week is no different. Except, I didn't exactly just put up words, this one had a lot more to it.

I used white paper and markers. The title or in the case the question/topic was "What Makes a Fairytale?"
So of course I asked my daughter what she thinks of when I say "fairytale" and I wrote down a bullet-pointed list of what she said with "Comes to mind...." as the heading. She named some of her favorite characters.

I also made some one that said "Once Upon A Time" with the word "once" underlined. I did this to discuss how a fairytale usually starts. Sometimes the whole familiar phrase is used, but sometimes just the "once" part is, or even another sentence all together.

Another one that said "Happily Ever After" to signify how a fairytale commonly ends. This was placed at the end of the board for that reason.

Another one that said "Good People" with another "comes to mind" bulleted list that my daughter helped me make.

Another one that said "Evil People/"Bad Guys"" with another "comes to mind" bulleted list that my daughter helped me make.

Another one that said "Fictional or "make believe""

Another one that said "Morals or lessons"

Another one that said "Sometimes There's Magic" with another "comes to mind" bulleted list that my daughter helped me make.

They were all tacked up in an order that made sense and will be discussed daily throughout this themed week.

Zoo Animals Word Wall

This is the first word wall I'm sharing! We usually do a word wall for each of our themes. Even before children can read they really benefit from being in a print rich environment. I like to use a pointer and read all the words each time we enter the classroom. So here's our Zoo Animals Word Wall

The animal cutouts were purchased from Dollar Tree. There were some other animals included in the pack and duplicates of each. Very worth the $1 they cost!

For the words I used index cards, a Sharpie, and funky scissors. I just write each word on a separate card and then cut them out. I had a title "Zoo Animals" and then the words were zebra, hippo, elephant, monkey, kangaroo, horse, giraffe, zebra, bear, penguin, sting ray, lion, and tiger. Your words might be a bit different depending on what's at your zoo.