Halloween in Jiangyou

I taught many Halloween and fall related lesson plans the past two weeks. Examples:

·         A fill-in-the-blank to introduce fall vocabulary and then asked them to tell me about fall in China.

·         Make as many words as you can using the letters in: Jack o Lantern (I also used Autumn Leaves, Harvest Time, and Haunted House).  They really liked this activity, and were surprised at the amount of words that could be made with just a few letters (the one that had the most was Harvest Time, which was over 110).  I invited the winning teams of four classes to come to my house and bake (cake or pancakes).  It was fun to see them get so excited about English words!  I learned that some of the students are pretty competitive.

·         I introduced some prepositions and showed a picture of ghosts inside a haunted house, and had them write sentences for each ghost (for example: In the living room, there is a ghost sitting on the sofa).

·         I talked about the origins of Halloween.  Did you know that people in England and Ireland originally started wearing costumes (a long time ago) so that ghosts and spirits wouldn’t recognize them, and at first they carried lanterns made out of turnips?  Then when the Irish came to America, they started using pumpkins instead because they were more readily available.

·         I introduced some common costumes and explained how to make them. Then I had them brainstorm what they would be for Halloween if they could, and also how they would make the costume.  Some of their answers were really creative, like UFO, Mickey Mouse, a fish, a bird, a fridge, Fruit Man, and an ice cream.

I made some great decorations for our English Library.  The students were very helpful, and if they saw me working on something they would ask to help.  We made paper chains, streamers, paper pumpkins, ghosts, and bats, leaves in fall colors, tissue ghosts, etc.  By myself, I also made a large paper tree to help cover some of the ugly blank white space on the wall, and pennants saying Happy Halloween. It’s great to know that any time I want to decorate I only have to show the students what I’m working on, and they’ll jump in to help.  Many times they have to do art projects for their classes but it’s rare that they can do it on their own, so I think they love the opportunity to make some easy crafts without worrying about them being perfect.  My site placement was pretty awesome in that respect, because I have lots of craft ideas and the desire to do artsy things.

Wall decor

Students helping me make the paper chain

Our Halloween party last Wednesday was a great success!  Mary baked some plum cake and bread, and caramel for dipping apples in.  She had figured out that you can make caramel just by boiling a can of condensed milk for 2.5 hours (that’s all you do- and then you open it, and bam, it tastes pretty close to caramel!).  We started the party by letting students make pomelo jack-o-lanterns (there aren’t many pumpkins at the market here, and the ones they have are long and skinny and not good for carving.  They wouldn’t have been able to stand up on their own).  We played pin-the-nose-on-the-witch, and they loved it!  It was so funny to spin them around blind-folded and see them stumble towards the poster.  The best one was when someone put the nose on the wall, a good two feet from the poster!  I taught them the Time Warp dance (from Rocky Horror Picture Show) and then we split everybody into two lines of 9 people each and then two people at a time would dance down the aisle.

Making pomelo lanterns

 Although Mary and I had come up with activities beforehand we didn’t plan things exactly and we just played it by ear during the party, which worked well.  I had wanted to do bobbing for apples but after the line dancing (which was spontaneous- Mary’s idea) I thought it would be good to have a calmer activity, so then we played Uno and Twister.  Also throughout the night, I was randomly coming up behind students and scaring them.  As the party was starting, I waited in the shadows with Alice and Sunflower and when two girls came towards the corner we jumped out and gave them a really good scare.  The funny thing was later I scared several people in quick succession- you’d think that after they heard someone scream they’d be alert for sneaking feet!  I showed the students a video from YouTube of Halloween lights flashing to the beat of the Gangnam Style song because several of the students are learning the dance for a performance, and then they taught some of the other students and we all danced it together.  It’s really such a fun dance to do with a bunch of people! 

Twister! Always fun

Not all the activities were exactly Halloween-related, but as far as being a really fun party we totally rocked!!  I know the students had a blast.

This was my playlist for the party:

·         Time Warp

·         This is Halloween (from Nightmare Before Christmas)

·         Jack’s Lament (Nightmare again)

·         Sally’s Song (Nightmare)

·         What’s This (Nightmare)

·         The Remains of the Day (from Corpse Bride)

·         Monster Mash

·         Purple People Eater

·         Witch Doctor

·         Michael Jackson’s Thriller

·         Grim Grinning Ghost

·         Addams Family Theme

·         Theme from Edward Scissorhands

·         Ghostbusters song