Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Super Fantastic Halloween Amazing Party Time!!




We have a rotation of students which means two days of Halloween! They are having big tests in their day-time schools this week so we celebrated Halloween a week early.
Halloween has not quite cought on here yet. I guess it was almost non-existent and unkown about 20 years ago. My Korean co-teachers think it once this generation grows up it will be bigger with their children.
My elementary students went absolutely psycho for the holiday! I was elated that half of them even dressed up. Costumes are very difficult to find here. The large store E-Mart (Korean Target type store) had a Halloween section that consisted of two double sided shelves. I could have fit all of the Halloween merchandise into the trunk of my Honda Civic. I am not joking...

Most of the who had costumes either wore a witch hat, a "Scream" movie mask (one of the only masks available here) or had a cloak and weapon of some kind.







This student brought his little sister for the party!


I was in a tough spot trying to think of a costume. Back in the States all I needed was 10 dollars and a white sheet with some paint to make pretty much any kind of costume. Here you cannot find a white sheet to save your life. It must be a Korean law that every pillowcase, blanket and sheet must have garish flowers or some type of ADD color scheme.

I took adavntage of the color situation and settled for a pirate ensemble. I found a garish red silk scarf which I wor on my head. You cannot see the image printed into it, but if you were to spread it out it would perplex you. It was covered with Knight helmets and...purses.

I picked up an eye-liner pen as well. It was surpisingly expensive, like 15 bucks. I guess makeup is spendy here but I also had no idea how to say "cheap one" in Korean.

It was the first time I had worn makeup since I was in theatre at Augsburg!


This is Heather, she is one of my Korean co-teachers.
I was happy to see that the other teachers dressed up as well.

Activities

We had a pretty good roster of activities planned for the children. We began the festivities by showing the first five minutes of "A Nightmare Before Christmas."

They went into full sponge mode. Most of them had never seen it.

The first activity was "True or False." The kids all get together in a big mob. The we ask them T/F questions like :

"True or False, Wherewolves ride broomsticks"

or

"True or false, teacher Peter's mother would sneak into his room and steal his Halloween Candy"


The kids then move to the side of the room that is true or false. Sometimes the herd mentality makes 100 percent of them lose at once. It's funny, I try to let them know it's ok to disagree with each other.

After that we played the "Scary Food Feel Game"



"Your touching Zombi eyeballs!!!!!" ( quail eggs)

Then they split up into roughly 6 groups of 8 and were given a large sheet of paper for pumpkin drawing.



Some students took several minutes to plan. The worked together on one big drawing.







Thats right, this pumpking has a pile of poop on his head. And he wasn't the only "poop-pumpkin."


Others were a little more spastic.
I call their works "Colage of Dischord"



The I told a "scary story." We turned the lights off and I used a flashlight under my face. I wrote it and during the writing process the head teacher kept telling me "put more blood in it, more blood!"

It was a fun day. The best part is after each party on the two days of festivities, I still had my pirate stuff on while I tought my middle-school classes.

Take it easy every bod, I will leave you with my favorite Halloween picture again!



This is Brandon, he loves his Axe. He looked like he had just drank six Red Bulls.

2 comments:

Adam said...

awesome blog Pete, that Brandon pic is hilarious and sorta frightening all at once!

Marla said...

This is Noclie Appel's mom. Thanks for updating the Halloween story. I am sure all the kids appreciated all the work the teachers put into it.