Mark & Lisa's Georgian Journal: Halloween at School.............................

When my counterpart teacher, Nino, learned that there was an American holiday called Halloween coming up she immediately seized the moment and said, "We need to plan a special day for all the classes." We then spent a lot of time prepping the kids on the origins of the holiday and what kinds of costumes we wanted them to create. I confess to being a little skeptical about what they would come up with. Prior to the big day, we had a team of students carve a Jack-o-Lantern (out of a squash of some sort that resembled a pumpkin), and Nino and a friend of hers went crazy trying to "decorate" the room. They brought in little plastic bugs and dinosaurs they thought looked scary. I tried to find black paper in town to make bats or spiders. No go. On the big day, we made 2 big ghosts to hang and had scary music playing. We put the headlamp I use for reading at home inside our pumpkin in the flash mode. The kids were so excited we actually needed someone to guard the door when word got out in the rest of the school that something spooky was going on in our room. Many teachers who did not have classes (many are part time) were in the back of the room watching the goings on. I had on my Marge Simpson costume on with 3' of blue hair and an outrageous necklace. They know "The Simpsonis" here, so the costume was a hit. The kids came to school dressed in many fantastic costumes themselves! They took turns describing their costumes in English and then each came forward one at a time to "Trick or Treat" at the classroom door from the inside out. Nino was poised in the hall outside the door with a big bag of candy, and she dutifully answered the door as each kid knocked in turn. Then I took picture of each student. Next we bobbed for apples... a big hit! There was a lot of water in the tub (at least to start with) and the kids were cheering for each other. We were waiting with towels to rescue them. Everyone then sang that old standard, "If You're Scary and You Know it Clap your Hands". As we reached the stanza, "If you're scary and you know it then your face will reallly show it" everyone made a ghoulish face. You can see my ghoulish face in one of the pictures below. We finished up by first discussing and then writing about the party in English. This week we are preparing a huge display with all the photos that we took and the kids' written reports. They have all been taught British English so many of them agreed that is was a very "jolly" party. I was pooped after holding separate Halloween parties for each of my five classes, but it was worth it! The festivities were apparently such a hit that Nino has just informed me that there will be a Christmas pagent at the end of December, and we need to come up with a big performance to wow the director! I will be waiting for all your recommendations, and I'm counting on all you music teachers out there to come up with something good!