Halloween Math Fun for Older Ones! (Ages 6-9)

Today's post is about some neat and inexpensive ideas of fun for children, ages 6-9, for Halloween themed math fun!

To do these activities, you will need to do the following:

1. Find a large assortment of Halloween themed manipulatives, such as mini erasers or plastic rings that are meant to be Halloween party favors.

2. Make or purchase the following charts:
Venn Diagram paper chart or Venn Diagram math tray...
Sorting paper chart or sorting math tray...
Graphing paper chart or graphing math tray...

Here is a link to the Lakeshore Learning math trays. We have these trays. The boys love using them!

3. You will need:
Some paper, pencils, and various bins, jars, and baskets for the erasers.

4. For a more Montessori-inspired setting, you may also wish to add the Hundreds Board, Fraction Circles, wooden trays, and self-check charts for the Control of Error for these activities. This way, as the child works through the activity, he or she will be able to check to see if their answers are correct. For the activities that involve using the Hundreds Board, the Hundreds Board also inherently works as the Control of Error for this work, as there is only room for one eraser per space on the Hundreds Board.The same is true with the Fraction Circles. The wooden trays are so that the child can easily carry his or her work to their work space with ease.

For the set-up for each math work, determine whether or not your child or children are familiar with the following math concepts. Make the call if this concept is new and will require a mini lesson on how to do the work or if it is a skill that they already know how to do...

Fractions

Have the child go through the Halloween erasers and set them into groups.
For a child who still needs a very concrete experience, you can use your Fraction Circles with this work. Have the child stack the erasers on the Fraction Circles to get the hang of how to determine the fractions.You could also have a child use your set of Fraction Skittles if you do not have Fraction Circles. To do this, have the child set up the Fraction Skittles, then, behind each section of the skittle, the child should place one eraser. Either way, whether you use Fraction Circles or Fraction Skittles, the child gets to see the one to one correspondence for each part of the fraction.
If a child has yet to learn how to simplify fractions, you can do a mini-lesson after they have grouped their erasers. For a child who already knows how to simplify fractions, you can have them simplify after they figure the initial amounts.
For a Variation of doing fractions work, if you have fractions dice, you can have the child roll the dice on their tray and then, do then problem using the erasers. Then, depending on how proficient they are with fractions, they could add, subtract, multiply or divide the fraction amounts rolled on the dice.
They also could play a game where the first roll is their roll and the second roll is the challenge roll. They can then compare if their roll is greater than or less than the challenge roll.

Decimals

You can either have the child convert their fractions into decimals or else, for a more concrete experience, you can use the Hundreds Board. Have the child place one eraser on each block of the hundreds board in random order...some children may decide that it will be easier to place each type of eraser into groups on the board...others might choose to keep the board random but will then figure out how many out of 100 are a particular type of eraser by counting the various types of erasers one group at a time.

Percentages 

Pretty much the same as above, converted into a percentage...

Multiplication

Give the child the basket or bin of erasers and see if they can make some multiplication facts out of the piles.

Division

Have the child try to make division facts using the erasers...you may want to pull out your division facts box for your child to refer to, to make sure that they have covered the different facts.

Estimation

If the child is familiar with estimation, have them estimate how many erasers are in each bin, basket, or container.
For estimating how many are in a filled container, you can use a large amount and then, see how they work through trying to estimate the total.
You can have an older child or a child who understands the concepts behind estimation to give some pointers to a younger child who has not had a lesson on estimation yet.
Clear containers, whether they are glass or plastic, work best for estimation work.
Mason canning jars, applesauce jars, spaghetti sauce jars, and leftover Rubber-maid type containers, etc. work well...
You can also do the reverse of this by having them start with an empty container and having them estimate how many erasers they think will fit into the container. Empty single serving applesauce cups and baby food jars work well for this estimation activity...
Both of these activities also reinforce the concept of re-purposing and re-using containers, so bonus there!

Solve for X

Using a different eraser for each problem, solve for X.
Set up problems for your child for any of the operations where the eraser represents X.
3rd Grade Gridiron made super cute Halloween flash cards where the child has to solve for X for both multiplication and division problems. We had already done solving for X using the erasers so it was a great transition to then have Big Bro solve for X using these adorable Halloween themed cards.
If you have not checked out 3rd Grade Gridiron and you have a child around the age of a third grader, be sure to check out her lovely blog! She has some wonderful freebies and really neat ideas!

Graphing

For a concrete graphing experience, the graphing math tray from Lakeshore Learning is excellent, as the child literally places one in each space on the graph.
The graphing tray literally work as a Control of Error, as there is only room for one eraser per space.
For a child who is more comfortable with a more abstract version of graphing, the child can make a paper graph on chart paper.
For graphing work, limit it to say five different types of erasers...then, have them graph how many there are of each type.
Again, if a younger child has not had much experience with graphing, this is something that an older child can easily model for a younger child...

Venn Diagram

The Lakeshore Learning Venn Diagram math tray is a very visual, very concrete way for a child to lay out how the erasers are alike and different.
If a child is new to doing Venn Diagrams, you can intentionally limit what is in the bin or on the tray for them to compare and contrast...

Depending on where you particular child is at with these math skills, you can design mini-lessons similar to how you would do a Montessori math presentation.

Hopefully, your child will enjoy doing these fun, Halloween themed math activities as much as Big Bro has been enjoying doing them! 

In case you are looking for Halloween fun for little ones, ages 3-6, here is a link that shows you all of my Halloween and fall themed posts, many of them featuring ideas for younger children. 

Hope that you find these ideas helpful! Happy fall fun!

Disclosure: 
I was not asked by Lakeshore Learning to highlight the math trays mentioned in this post. Rather, wanted to tell you about them, as we have them and love them! One of the best math purchases ever! You can use them for all sorts of subject areas beyond just math, too. 
Regarding mentioning the Hundreds Board, the Fraction Circles, and the Fraction Skittles: 
Again, these are materials that we have and use for these sorts of math works. 
Ours are not necessarily the same brand as the ones I have listed. I just did a search and found ones that have direct links to similar products like the ones we have in our home.

Halloween Oldies But Goodies...

For today's post, am going to share via a photo tour, the Halloween and fall themed work we have done here in the previous few years. 

Then, next week, will share the Halloween and fall themed work we are doing this year.
The items for next week will be for children ages 5-9.

Since many of my blog readers have younger ones, I thought that you would like to see works we have done in the past, as my sons were younger then, so the ideas might work well for your little ones in your home or classroom.  

The works featured in these photos are ideally for ages 3-5, although you can really do them from about 2 to about age 6.

In our home, we do not do scary things for Halloween. We obviously did not when the boys were younger, but we continue to not do scary stuff now that they are a little older.
We focus more on the fun of the activities surrounding Halloween, such as carving pumpkins into Jack-o-lanterns, making fun bat, pumpkin, and spider crafts, dressing in costumes, and going trick-or-treating.

We keep trick-or-treating to a very small amount of homes in our neighborhood, usually not even around our whole block.

The boys, enjoy putting on costumes year-round, not just for Halloween.
They love to role play and dress as vets, pirates, cowboys, astronauts, Star Wars characters, and super heroes. Little Bro especially loves to dress up! He will sometimes put a costume on and sport it all day, from morning Montessori inspired work time, to the playground and so on...
So the only thing that sets Halloween apart for him, according to him is that "the neighbors give you candy and you usually get a doughnut and some apple cider."
Well, hope that you will enjoy our Halloween Oldies but Goodies...

New photos for Halloween and fall themed works for older ones will be up in next week's posts...

Fall counting, 1-20, using silk fall leaves.

Halloween village...works well for story telling as well as hiding clues for scavenger hunts. You place the scavenger hunt clues under the little houses.

Bead Transfer: One to many...the ghosts are actually taper candle holders, but they work great to hold tiny beads.

Orange scented dough with festive, fun Halloween themed cookie cutters...

Halloween items for the functional play kitchen area...

Math game using tiny white dominoes and little Halloween erasers as the counters for the game.

Wooden jack-o-lantern mask: Child colors and then, can hold and wear. These wooden masks also work well for shadow puppet shows...

Weighing and balancing activity...child selects the pieces to weigh and places them on the balance...

October mini book to make, along with word cards to go with the book. The pumpkins have hooks on them and go on a display for the months of the year...

These little jack-o-lantern containers have lids that come off...you can use them for a variety of work, such as matching upper case and lower case letters, words and word cards, or math facts. We have used these in a variety of ways over the years...

If you have posts with photos for ideas of Halloween themed activities for little ones, either ages 18 months to age 3, or else ages 3-6, please add your link to this post. 

If you have Halloween / fall themed activities for older ones, say either ages 5-9 or 6-9, please feel free to add them here or to next week's post, as next week, will feature Halloween and fall fun for 6-9. 
It does not have to be a Montessori inspired Halloween or fall themed activity...it can be play based as well, just nothing scary.  

We do not do scary here in our home so I just don't feel right about promoting scary things to young children. 

When we first moved to Florida, we decided to take the boys for a ride to see how the homes were decorated for Halloween, expecting to see pumpkins, some blow up Jack-o-lanterns, and the like. 
Well, there was a home south of us that Dear Hubby and I were horrified to see...they took a stuffed mannequin and had a noose around his neck. They had him dressed like a cross between a zombie and a farmer. They had him dangling, as if he had hung himself, from outside the second story bedroom window of their home! To me, that is not remotely appropriate, nor festive or fun... it was very scary and a horrible image for anyone to see. I happen to know two people who have committed suicide so to see someone making that into a "trick" for Halloween is beyond disturbing. 


We luckily were ably to distract the boys so that they did not catch a glimpse of the house. I do not want that as an image that my sons associate with Halloween or any other day of the year, for that matter.


So, what are your thoughts on scary decorations? Yes or no? 
I would love to hear your thoughts and appreciate input from all sides, but will not put up links to posts on my blog that are not family friendly and fun for fall...

Would love to see your ideas and to visit your family friendly blogs and websites! 

Have a happy weekend! 

Fun New Halloween Themed Montessori Math Work

For those of you who use Montessori inspired math beads, here is a fun Halloween themed math work for the month of October:
Instead of using the arrows for counting by 5's with the beads or bead chains, you can use tiny ghost erasers.
First, you will need a total of 20 ghost erasers.
These are available at the dollar section of Target, although you may find other Halloween themed erasers at other stores that would work just as well...
To prepare this work, do the following:
Take a black permanent marker and write the following numbers on the ghosts:
5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55,60,65,70,75,80,85,90,95,100.
Then, if you normally use a light colored rug for math work, swap it out for a dark colored one, such as navy blue or black.
This is so that the beads and the white ghosts show up nicely...
Then, explain to your child that instead of using bead chain arrows for counting, that they may choose to use the ghosts for counting by 5's and if they do that work and like using the little ghosts in place of the arrows, that you will make other sets of erasers for the other counting with the beads...
The child should roll out their mat...
Then, he or she should lay out either their 5's bead chains from the Bead Cabinet or else their 5's beads from the Decanomial Bead Box, depending on what beads you happen to have...
Then, next to the pile of beads or bead chains, the child should lay out the pile of ghosts so that all of the numbers written in marker are face up...they can be kept in random order if the child chooses, or else, the child could choose to place these ghosts in correct number order first...
Then, the child should proceed doing the counting by 5's work as he or she normally would do, except subbing in the tiny numbered ghosts for the bead chain arrows.
This work was a hit with both boys! 
If you feel so inclined, you can use other small erasers for additional counting.
The bats from Target work well for counting by 2's, as the bats have two wings...the boys loved this work as well!
I have added some photos of the boys doing the work with counting by 2's using the bats.
To use the bats as the fill-in for the bead chain arrows, buy the bat erasers from Target.
Then, in silver metallic marker, write all of the counting by 2's numbers onto the bats. For the purpose of this work, we just did up to 50:
2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24,26,28, 30,32,34,36, 38,40,42,44,46,48,50.
For this work, the boys added a felt tree and they decided to put the 2's green beads in the tree as the leaves...then, they added some gray pieces for a cave and put the bats in and around the cave and the tree.
Candy corns work well for counting by 3's, as the candy corns are like triangles, with three sides, plus they have three colors on them...
Pumpkin candies work well for counting by 10's...
This is the extent of what we have tried and have enjoyed, but you could certainly come up with more Halloween themed replacements for the bead chain arrows.

Well, here are some photos of the work with the ghosts filling in for the bead chain arrows for counting by 5's, as well as photos of the bats filling in for the bead chain arrows for counting by 2's.

We use the beads from our Decanomial Bead Box for counting

Blue beads for counting by 5's; ghosts filling in for bead chain arrows...

Close-up of little ghosts and beads...

One view of the beads and the ghosts...

Whole view of completed counting by 5's work using ghosts for bead chain arrows...

Big Bro set up the counting by 2's work for himself and for Little Bro.

Close-up of the bats filling in for the counting by 2's bead chain arrows.

Little Bro doing the counting by 2's work.

Do you have any Halloween themed works that you would like to share?
if you do, please feel free to provide a link in the comments section of this post.

I will be adding other Halloween themed activities over the course of the next few days, so be sure to pop back to see the others I will be adding...

Fun Halloween Pillow Project

We have been busy doing some fun Halloween / Harvest shelf work and projects.
One project that both boys just loved doing was making Halloween pillows.

We had made gingerbread boy pillows last year at Christmas and since they had enjoyed those so much, we decided to make some fun Halloween themed ones.
The pillows we make are for decorative purposes only, not to be used as a real pillow. We have made them out of foam board as well as felt. For our Halloween pillows, we made them out of foam board. 

Big Bro wanted to make a jack o' lantern pillow and Little Bro wanted to make a ghost one...so we went to the arts and crafts store, got the supplies, and today, the boys worked on their pillows.

They had a fun time making them!

Making pillows is something that I had started to do back in my classroom days, about 12 years ago...one of my colleagues had said that she loved having children do pillow projects, as so many skills are developed throughout this project...and let me tell you, she is so right!!! (Thanks, Lois!)


Making pillows like the ones Big Bro and Little Bro have made is a great project for children, as first, there are so many skills that are developed while making them...

• Brainstorming ideas for the pillow design

• Shopping for the materials and this step involves selecting materials, measuring materials, using money, and counting change

• Drawing the design onto the material

• Cutting out two copies of the same design at the same time

• Hole punching through the material

• Sewing the pillow

• Decorating the pillow

• Stuffing the pillow

The other thing is that you can choose to set the pillow project up as shelf work, which we have done in the past, or else, you can just make it a special  themed day and work on the pillows from start to finish...that is what we did with the Halloween pillows, since October 31st is quickly approaching...

All in all, the pillows are more than just a cute Halloween project...they really do quite a bit of
learning along the way:)

Photos - Halloween Week

We have had a busy week since returning from Pennsylvania...

Big Bro and Little Bro have done some neat Halloween / fall work:
Making candy ghosts, pounding nails into pumpkins, making Pumpkin Life Cycle books, creating fall themed poetry books, pumpkin carving and painting, making ghost PR & J sandwiches, lining up small pumpkins and gourds by size and then by weight, patterning activities and addition activities with Halloween themed mini erasers, creating Play Doh cut outs with Halloween themed cookie cutters, counting and sorting silk fall colored leaves, designing mosaic frames to go around our Halloween pictures, doing spider math, sorting, patterning, graphing, and weighing different types of candy, creating Halloween puppets, and coming up with a story for our Halloween village. Big Bro had such a good time working with the ceramic Halloween village that he decided to do an extension of this work by building his own block version of his Halloween village.





In addition to our work, we had a few visits to the doctor's office, as Mommy has been a bit sick since we have returned. Not the flu, just a sinus, eye, and double ear infection. Not fun being sick with trying to get caught up on homeschooling, laundry, and just day to day stuff though...

The boys have been troopers and so has Dear Hubby.

He has pitched in by making meals, and helping with reviewing the boys's work when he has gotten home from work.
Luckily, thanks to antibiotics, I am starting to feel better.

We actually went to Sea World last night, thinking that we were going to see some of the "Halloween Spooktacular" show they have been advertising, but what we didn't know was that the show is held on weekends only for the month of October. It ended up being a nice time, though, as there were hardly any visitors to the park so it was very easy to get from place to place. We just took a nice stroll around the park and only stopped at a couple of exhibits. The boys loved playing in the water park area while I got to relax and sit and just watch them playing.
As crazy as it may seem to some of you, going to Sea World is incredibly relaxing when you go off season. Seeing the animals and looking at the beautiful landscaping is a very peaceful experience.
A few times this year when life has been particularly busy, we have taken a break from our routines and have gone there just to hang out. Seeing belugas, manatees, dolphins, penguins, sharks, and killer whales is a great way to take your mind off of the daily grind.