When I saw the amazing assortment of fall themed crafts that I could get at Oriental Trading, I ordered some items to compliment our upcoming Math and Science studies.  What could be more fun than learning through crafts??

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We’ve been learning all about shapes in Math, recognizing them and comparing and contrasting them with other shapes, so the Spider Magnet Craft Kit was perfect for a little review on shapes!

My kiddos had so much fun making these and had even more fun giggling at the silly faces on the spiders!

Once we mastered peeling the paper backing off the spiders legs and eyes/mouth, they were SUPER easy for my Kinder to assemble and got them asking some great questions about spiders (which I wrote down so we can talk more about them in a few weeks). There is a magnet strip that comes with each spider, so my kiddos were also excited that they could take their spiders home and hang them up!

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Next up were the BOO Beaded bracelet craft kits.  My kiddos LOVED these and I loved them too.  They tied in perfectly with our study of AB patterns!  Just to be sure we were all on the same page, I opened each of the individually wrapped kits and poured the contents into individual cups, so my kiddos didn’t have to fuss with that.  I also substituted a glitter pipe cleaner in place of the stretchy elastic cord that came with each bracelet kit.  My Kinders would have had a difficult time with the knot tying, so I opted for something simpler.

My Kinders were SO excited about making these bracelets–even 2 weeks later, they are STILL wearing them!!

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After we made those bracelets, it meant that it was time to move on to more complex patterns, so we used the Halloween Color Pony Bead Assortment to help us out!  I gave each of my Kinders about 10-20 beads of three of the four colors and had them create their own ABC pattern.  I put the beads in small cups again, just to avoid beads everywhere–it worked great!

Our Art teacher commented on our amazing work with patterns!

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We decided to continue the pattern fun by making some head wear to complement our bracelets, so we used the Fabulous Foam Self-Adhesive Fall Leaf Stickers!

We loved how easy these leaf stickers were to peel off and stick on our sentence strips.  We had each of the children pick a pattern (either shape or color) and they could choose an AB, and ABC, or and ABCD pattern.  We had each of them lay out their stickers BEFORE sticking them on the sentence strip, so the adults could walk around and check their work before it became permanent.  This assortment of stickers came in a pack of 500 and was plenty for my 25 students to create with!

They walked around the classroom after we stapled their head bands and tried to find someone who had the same pattern as they did!  It was so sweet to hear their conversations about patterns.

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Next up are two projects that we haven’t started working on yet!  I wanted to save them until we had learned more about them, but I wanted to show you my (very early) prototype of our pumpkin booklets we will make in two weeks:

I’m still working on creating a pattern for this (I’ll post it when I do!), but I grabbed an old one I had in my filing cabinet, just to try it out.

We will use the Jumbo Foam Pumpkins as the backdrop for our booklets:

We will use some other elements to show how a pumpkin grows.  On this last page you can see how I stapled this mini-booklet to the foam pumpkin.  We will decorate the top of the pumpkin with some pipe cleaner vines and a tissue paper flower (I promise to share pictures when we do!).  I think these will be a great visual for my Kinders to remember how a pumpkin grows!

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Also coming up, are these adorable Spider Ring craft kits!  Once my Kinders started asking so many spider questions about the spiders they made with the Spider Magnet Craft Kit, I knew I wanted to put these on the back burner until later this month when our study of spiders came up.  Look how CUTE these are!! They will be a great addition to our bracelet and head wear collection we have going!

Head on over to Oriental Trading to get your classrooms and celebrations ready for Fall!!

Disclaimer: Oriental Trading provided me with these products in exchange for my review.