I wanted to share one of my favorite Halloween writing activities with you today. My students absolutely LOVE doing this, and I am always blown away by their creativity.
I give them this writing prompt with just my head copied on the page. Then, the students have to decide what they think I should dress as for Halloween. I loved the one above. Obviously, I don’t hide my love for coffee. Lol!
They were all so unique!
I had these posted on my Instagram earlier today, and had some requests for this printable. I went ahead and threw it together in a FREEBIE for you. I also made it editable, so you can add your name and picture.
Click on the picture below to join my email family and get this printable for FREE.
In the first tub, I placed my new 
The second tub is filled with Halloween erasers that I purchased from the Dollar Spot at Target two years ago. These seasonal erasers are always a great find and can be used for so many things. For the morning tub, I didn’t give the students a particular task for these. I just like to let their creativity take over. They have had so much fun making shapes, patterns, and pictures with these.
The third tub contains letter tiles. These tiles have all of the individual letters as well as common vowel pairs and word families. The letter tiles came with small magnetic boards, but cookie sheets would also work really well with these. I truly have no clue what brand these tiles are, but you could always just put regular 
My fourth tub contains 
I was so excited when I ordered this 
The sixth tub contains coloring pages. I included some primary type coloring pages that I downloaded for free from 
You can read about my first two rounds of Morning Tubs by clicking on the links below.
I truly like to put the focus on learning new vocabulary during this voyage instead of focusing completely on Columbus. I absolutely understand that Columbus Day is controversial in many ways, so for my first graders, I put the main focus on the idea of being an explorer. We discuss the meaning of the words voyage, explore, discover, explorer, trade, etc.
We start off by passing out our 
Then, we start our voyage. We read about our first trade item, and the students choose a trinket to trade. Then, we travel to the first location on our map. The students trade their trinket for the item from the Natives.
We trade for all types of items that the explorers traded for with the Native Americans (popcorn, spices, feathers, shells, etc.).
After we make each trade, we learn about the item in our booklets, and then write about our learning.
It’s a fun day, and the students love it.
At some point during the day, we also complete these 
I am a little bit obsessed with cute monsters…not scary ones. I even had a “monster themed” 1st 
These are great for students to fill out prior to conferences. It really gives you an insight into how they see their school year.
This will definitely be a new annual tradition. My students were so unbelievably excited. I wish I would have videotaped their reactions when they came in this morning. When the students walked down the hall, my door was closed and the lights were off.
I also hung plastic bats from Dollar Tree onto my lanterns.
The purple lights and flashlights added such a wonderful glow to the room.
We wrote a lot about bats, and the students were great about using this as a helper.
The students must have told me a hundred times today that this was the best day ever. Some of the best reactions…”Now, this is what I call a Friday!” “Thank you so much for doing this for us, Mrs. Southard. It is really cool!” “You are just like Ms. Frizzle!”