I have a slight confession to make—I DESPISE the holiday Halloween. I don’t enjoy being scared, and I really don’t like all of the icky costumes that come with the holiday. However, after hearing about how excited my 5th graders were about Halloween this year, I knew that I had to do something at school to bring a little bit of the holiday magic into our classroom.
For the entire week, I kept making little comments to my students reminding them that I would not be at school on Friday afternoon. It meant that I would miss their Fall Festival/Party, but I promised them I would make them something yummy and leave it behind for the sub to share with them.
Actually, I had NO plans for getting a sub for the afternoon. When I dropped my kiddos off to lunch on Friday, I rushed back to my room, threw up some decorations, projected my video on the smart board, mixed together our Witches’ Brew snack, turned on the scary music and turned off the lights, and dressed into costume.
When I picked the students up from lunch, I had turned into the (not so scary looking) substitute, Ms. Krimpke. The students followed me back to the classroom and opened up to the door to a wall of cobwebs, darkness, flickering candles, and scary music.
The students were laughing and giggling as they found their seats. I played my video message for them letting them know that I loved them all dearly and was sad to be missing the party. I also told them that they needed to be kind and helpful to their sub, Ms. Krimpke as she wasn’t used to dealing with small children.
After the short video, we began our directed drawing of our haunted Halloween mansion thanks to Art for Kids Hub. I stayed in character for a while and then we ate our witches’ brew and drank our witches’ snot for our afternoon snack.
We had a blast, and I really loved hearing the kiddos say they had fun. It was just enough Halloween magic to spice things up in our classroom! Here is a video of my Periscope that I did right after school was out on Friday. 🙂
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Wow! This looks like an amazing day. I love the idea of channeling all the Halloween madness for learning. Way to go!
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