This month at RisingOaks Early Learning | Saint John Paul II, the preschoolers have been fully embracing the festive spirit with Halloween and Thanksgiving vibes. For Thanksgiving, we discussed family gatherings, traditional foods, appreciation of nature, and our loved ones. With Halloween approaching, our preschoolers are excitedly talking about their costume plans. To embrace the Halloween spirit, the children participated in a creative activity by making their own spooky monster spinners. They used circular pieces of cardboard, beads, and small lids as handles. Before the activity, we explored how to spin the spinners and practiced spinning them. To create a scary monster spinner, the children began by decorating the tops of their spinners with colouring and patterns using markers. Next, they added googly eyes of various sizes and colours, along with pompoms, to craft different monsters by spreading glue on the spinners. Some preschoolers focused on using different coloured markers to create a rainbow effect, while others enjoyed scooping glue and spreading it on their spinners. Notably, Noam positioned two googly eyes on opposite sides of a bead handle in the middle of his spinner and drew a mouth. He also added two green pompoms as cheeks and explained that he was creating a face that resembled a person. Meanwhile, Ethan, Isla, and Noah D. preferred to use only googly eyes for their spooky spinners, while others chose to decorate with both pomp-poms and googly eyes. The preschoolers thoroughly enjoyed the activity, with some spending a significant amount of time exploring glue’s texture and effects on the spinners. This activity fostered creativity, imagination, and artistic skills, providing valuable opportunities to enhance fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, concentration, and problem-solving abilities. It also encouraged self-expression and social interaction as they shared ideas and admired each other’s work.
