Halloween

We celebrated Halloween here yesterday and it was awesome! Principal Zhang left it up to me to plan out Halloween since nobody except me had celebrated it before. So this past week I've been getting everything ready, from the Halloween paper masks, to decorations and jack-o-lanterns, to activities, candy, and most importantly, the haunted house. Everything went really well and I even taught the kids how to make jack-o-lanterns (using pumpkins we grew ourselves). But the real fun was the haunted house. Although we lacked serious Halloween themed props, toys, and decorations, we did the best we could with what we had. We used an empty classroom and brought over 40 or so student desks, stacked them on top of each other, and arranged them in the room to make a maze. We then used every extra cloth and bedsheet and pinned them to the desks to create the "walls." Almost every turn and crook had a spot where teachers hid to scare the children when they passed by. We used newspaper to cover the windows and put a few desk lamps in various positions to darken the room. I made paper bats and hung them on the ceiling fan, and put scary paper cutouts in front of light bulbs. I also printed out some scary faces, propped them against chairs, and dressed them in clothes to create fake ghosts. We even used cotton we found in a pillow to create fake spider webs and were lucky enough to find some fake rubbery bugs. I downloaded scary Halloween music and played it loudly as students passed through.

The day of, I had given paper masks for the students to cut out and color. Designs ranged from cute monkeys to scary zombies, so the kids got to pick what they wanted and got really into it. An hour after dinner, I got the teachers together and put them into their designated scaring positions (behind walls, under desks, etc…). I even painted my face with Principal Zhang and stood in a corner to scare the kids. All six grades starting with 6th grade down all went through, with anticipation and excitement building as kids waited outside for their turn heard screams and scary music. For their bravery, after they exited, they could grab some candy knowing that they could face any difficult situation, no matter how scary it might seem. All in all, it turned out surprisingly well - only a handful of kids cried, but that's a good sign, right?