Kindergarten & Preschool Halloween Math
Geometry Jacks & Recording Sheets!
For a fun kindergarten or preschool Halloween activity, have your students create a Geometry Jack pumpkin face.
Students learn or review shape vocabulary, practice counting, and have opportunities to problem solve and be creative as they make their own recording sheets.
For best results, provide children with plenty of hands on time with real pumpkins. Click here for a math and science pumpkin theme...
Materials:
If you want smaller pumpkins, provide children with smaller paper and cut out the black geometrical shapes smaller.
- 9 x 12 pieces of orange, cream, and yellow construction paper (pumpkins come in a variety of shades and it will make your displays more interesting)
- optional - instead of construction paper use scrap printed wall papers or orange and yellow finger painted papers the children have made previously
- scraps of green or brown paper for stems
- black shapes precut by teacher into circles, rectangles, squares and triangles (cut them large enough for the size of paper you choose to use
- glue, scissors
- optional paper for recording sheets (see image below)
First make the faces
1. Children draw, then cut out large pumpkin shapes (encourage them to draw and cut them as large as they can or you may have teeny circles in the middle of the paper!) Tip! Teach kids to cut outside their drawing lines.
2. Children put their names on the back.
3. Children choose their shapes and glue faces on their pumpkins. Children cut out stem shapes and glue on.
4. Set pictures to dry and bring them to carpet time later.
5. Show the Geometry Jacks and discuss the various shapes the children chose (to review vocabulary) and/or asks children if they want to share what shapes they chose.
Optional Recording Sheet Activity
I prefer to have children create their own recording sheets by first demonstrating my thinking for the class, as I create a sample recording sheet.
Depending on the abilities of your students it could go like this...
"I am going to put my name at the top of this blank piece of paper so I have lots of room to print underneath. I think I will put a line under my name.
Now I am going to glue one of the black circles on my recording sheet because I used black circles on my pumpkin's face. I am going to count the circles on my pumpkin face, 1, 2, 3 . I am printing a 3 next to my black circle because I used 3 black circles to make my face.
Now I am going to glue on the other shape I used. What shape was it? Thanks, Sandy, it was a square. I only used one square so I will print a 1 beside the square. That is all the shapes I used so I am going to draw a line under that.
Now I am going to draw a little picture of my pumpkin underneath. I am going to count how many shapes I used all together on my pumpkin, 1, 2, 3, 4. So I am going to print a 4 beside my little face. Now I am finished."
Young children will not get all of this in one sessions. Demonstrate again the next day, with the first recording sheet posted and ask the kids to tell you what you did next. E.G. " What did I do after I printed my name? That's right, I drew a line under it.
After you have children make their own recording sheets a number of times, they become better at defining the spaces on their paper.
ALL PUMPKIN & HALLOWEEN PAGES:
1. Pumpkin theme...
Teach science and math with pumpkins
2. Science, math
Make a pumpkin book to record all pumpkin science and math observations and also a "Parts of a Pumpkin Plant" booklet. Kindergarten-lesson plan bonus - 2 free Halloween worksheets.
3. Pumpkin mini book
Make this simple preschool or kindergarten Halloween minibook to practice the letter Pp (or J for jack-o'-lantern or H for Halloween).
4. Art & Math
Download these Halloween math pages to give students practice matching similar shapes.
Introduce the concept and vocabulary of symmetry to kids as they match and glue the pumpkins together.
5. More Art & Math!
Pumpkin math art, graphs, and tallies!
6. Halloween Bulletin Board and free tracer
Instead of creating a bulletin board with 20 identical pieces of artwork, find out how to use 3 or 4 different theme activities (being sure to include one item from each student in the class).
7. Geometry Jacks & Recording Sheets!
Pumpkin math art, graphs, and tallies!
