Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet! And News of a Week of Freebies

Hallowe'en, Rhyme and Freebies

Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet - Using Hallowe'en to Explore Rhyme

My regular readers will already know that I love this time of year. Today it's a crisp autumn day. The sun is shining and it's still quite warm. The colour of the leaves is highlighted by the sunlight hitting them. This is how autumn should be...

I know that many of you are counting down to the autumn break (mine starts at the end of next week). Hallowe'en falls right in the middle of the break, and it's a shame that the actual day isn't on a school day. With that in mund, I know that a lot of you, like me, are trying to find ways to fit something in for Hallowe'en this week.

I love Hallowe'en - always have. But it was so different when I was growing up. The American tradition of Trick or Treat has only began taking a hold in the UK in the last few years or so, and when I was growing up, Hallowe'en meant a lot more than just collecting money and treats (and let's face it, nowadays there is more than a small risk of stranger danger to knocking on strangers' doors...). For us, Hallowe'en was planned months in advance. We made our own costumes, we hollowed out our own vegetables, usually swedes or potatoes (pumpkins were a rare sight here when I was growing up) that would cook when the candle was put inside, giving us distictive memories of the smells of Hallowe'en to cherish too. Oh, and by the way, have you ever tried to hollow out a swede...? Give it a go and let me know how you get on... We planned our own party, designed the invitations, booked a venue and roped in adults to help us with the party food. We played traditional Hallowe'en games like apple bobbing and apple tucking. Now it's so commercialised that for me it's lost a bit of its sparkle.

As much as many schools try to ban Hallowe'en (believe it or not, lots of church schools over here do. I've even known Harry Potter to be banned from some church schools..), it is a wonderful stimulus for children. What better than Hallowe'en to spark a child's imagination, awaken their senses and get them enthused. We all know how difficult it is to get children writing, so we should be stoking the fire of their imagination rather than dampening it down.

Using the popular saying "Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet!" as inspiration, this unit includes a series of activities designed to get children thinking about rhyming words.Rhyming words are words that have the same ending sounds. Examples of rhyming words are cat, hat, bat, mat, fat and rat. Every word can rhyme with another word – they just have to sound the same at the end. Rhyming words are a great way to introduce and discuss the different spelling patterns that make the same sounds.

The pack is available to download now in my TN and TPT stores - clicking on the pictures below will take you straight there (coloured picture for TN, Greyscale picture for TPT). The activities have bee produced using greyscale graphics to save on your printer ink, and include:

1. Writing paper
2. Rhyme Time word matching game
3. Pick a Rhyme sentence and poetry writing exercise
4. Smell my Feet rhyming game
5. Rhyme Crime clue solving game
6. Fishing for Rhymes go fish game
7. Answer sheets where applicable

I'd love it if you would take a look at it and perhaps leave me a comment, or join up as a follower of my store for regular updates and offers.

A Week of Hallowe'en Freebies

Exciting news now of a week of freebies coming your way. From tomorrow I will be posting a new Trick or Treat Hallowe'en freebie every day - I will be tricking you or treating you. Will it be a chocolate frog or a box of bombs...?  They will only be available through my Facebook page to my Facebook followers, so gather some pace and like us now. Click on the picture below to take you to my page.