This week we will be making and studying skeletons! Since our district is having a short week with only 2 1/2 days we are going to be reading Halloween fun books and doing spiders, skeletons and fun pumpkin math and activities.
The Skeleton Dance
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,
Doin’ the skeleton dance.
The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone.
The knee bone’s connected to the neck bone.
Doin’ the skeleton dance.
The hip bone’s connected to the backbone.
The backbone’s connected to the neck bone.
Doin’ the skeleton dance.
Shake your hands to the right.
Put your hands in the air.
Put your hands out of sight!
Shake your hands to the right.
Put your hands in the air.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle,
wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle… wiggle your knees.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones,
The directions for this cool skeleton art project are HERE. They take 8 pieces of 1 x 18 white and 1 x 18 black strips. Then the head and hands and feet are copied on art paper. The folding is the hard part for kids. Glue 2 strips together same color end to end. Then glue a black and a white together at a 90 degree angle like this.
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| Weaving a skeleton body for art. |
Then comes the fun part. Cross the white over the black in front, then the black over the white turning it a little as you go. It will always look like an L. Some kids crossed it behind and some kids crossed it in front. It doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent. It was pretty easy for them, they got into a rythm.
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| Skeleton art project |
When they got to the end of the strips they glued the last 2 bits together. Each of these make an arm or a leg. The middle is done same way just use 3 inch x 18 inch paper to weave back and forth. Glue 2 legs to the middle and 2 arms to the top of middle section. A cute skeleton head and feet can be found at Family Education’s site. 
HALLOWEEN CENTER GAMES
I made up some GHOST BINGO cards at DLTK HERE. They will be fun for a centers game. I had half Halloween words, half Halloween pictures.
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| TRICK OR TREAT | BATMAN SIGNAL |  |
DRAGON |  |
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| 3 GHOSTIES | SKELETON CANDLE |  |
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CARAMEL APPLES | |||||
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GHOULS | HALLOWEEN NIGHT |  |
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3 CANDLES |  |
BLACK CAT |  |
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I have a dozen skeleton heads and a sheet of skeleton heads for math. I will use it for a math game for the kids to choose a number between 8 and 12 and figure out all the addends they can make as number sentences with that number as the sum. We could also do skeleton shapes with marshmallows and toothpicks. Here is an example of a cube’s skeleton shape.
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| The skeleton of a cube made with marshmallows and toothpicks or clay and straws The idea is from N Rich Maths. |
I have a giant skeleton on the front board with “parts of the skeleton” write on wipe off sheet to go with it that I made. It is a fun center for the students to figure out the names of all the bone body parts. I put in the first letter of each, or the first 2 letters on hard ones like W-R____ ____ ____ for wrist bone.
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| Print a “label the skeleton” here. |
Activity Village has a fun downloadable game of how to make a skeleton rolling the dice and putting a part together. It also looks fun. It should be a fun day.