October Planning!

This week marks a new month!  I don't know about you, but I look forward to October EVERY year! It is by far my favorite month! I actually wish we had more weeks so I could do MORE than what I have time for.   So this is what I have planned for in October, the themes, at least.

I send home the calendars every month for the kids to keep in their binders. (These calendars are from DJ Inkers, and I just add my info and print!)

I start the week with this video from You Tube, but I have a few in {my playlist} I like to show. They are quick and the kids love them. Especially this song - it gets stuck in their head. haha

One of the things that I'll be doing this week is a firefighter poem.   I start the week with it and then we do various activities from it during the week. Click the picture to download it.  I found the poem years ago from Just4Teachers as a freebie.  You can see my poetry schedule that I do (most of the time) on {this post}.

I'm very thankful that this year, Scholastic News put in a Fire Safety issue in their 1st grade set. The only one I had was from 2nd grade and that doesn't work well for most of my 1st graders right now.

Also, this week, we have planned for Ron to come in and do a presentation for 1st grade! He has done this almost every year for me. At this school, it's a bigger presentation than when I was at my last school and we only had 4-5 classes. haha.  This school has 13 1st grade teachers! So we all go into the cafeteria where the stage is and he "performs" there for us. This is last year's presentation...

Me pregnant with Caroline.

Then I got to put on the suit. It barely fit over my belly. haha

The kids always love it. And since we can't take too many field trips, it's a great way for a field trip to come to us! I bet if you called your local fire station, they would be able to come do a presentation. I happen to know someone that does when he's off shift (benefit of being a firefighter wife.haha), but a lot of times, they do it WHILE on shift and they bring the firetruck. The only downfall is that since they're on shift, if they get a call, your presentation is cut short.  

I'm also going to be incorporating the "five senses" into our week. I did it last year, but I didn't get to blog about it because it was right when my computer crashed :(  So hopefully I can share the fun that we have this time!

Here are some other resources I'll be using this month to help teach the themes I have planned.

{Spiders} are another one of my favorite things!! Check out {THIS} post to see what we did last year. There are a few freebies over there too.

For Pumpkin week, click picture below to check out the post I wrote on what books I use and for what. I just love pumpkins!! I mean, who DOESN'T love pumpkins???

 I love using my Hands-On Learning with Pumpkins pack - it's just like my Apple Pack!

Here's a great freebie for Songs and Poems for October!  If you haven't figured it out by now, I LOVE using poems and songs. haha

And I will be using a lot of centers from my October center pack - and other resources, but I haven't quite figured all that out yet. haha