Our Halloween Party!

Ok, so I am a bit late on this blog posting. It has been a crazy week full of report card preparation and end of the quarter catching up but, better late then never?

We are so lucky to have wonderful parent involvement in our room. Our parents are eager to donate their time, supplies, and anything else they can offer to help us out with anything we need.  

In our room, since we are in fifth and sixth grade, we allow the students to plan their own party. The way this works is by organizing a committee for each holiday (Valentines day, Christmas, and Halloween). These committees meet during recess and propose a theme, games, and various food choices. We, the teachers, then work to turn their ideas into a reality. It really runs quite smoothly!

So, for Halloween this year, my students chose a spooky theme. We had a variety of games and food choices that were brought in and created, some spooky and some.....not so much. But it's the thought that counts!

He are some of our our spooky treats that one of our wonderful parents made!

We spent the morning listening to spooky halloween mysteries on the computer. The students also created a polygon pumpkin at this time. It was a great way for them to come in, relax, and begin their day. They were asks to create a pumpkin using at least 8 polygon shapes, keeping in mind what we had been learning about polygons this week. 

They were also asked to write a journal prompt! In our room, we our working on a persuasive writing unit about pet rocks. Each students was asked to bring in a pet rock and they are in the process of writing to explain why pet rocks are the best pet ever (more on that in a later post). They are so thrilled about this writing experience, I can not even tell you! I believe that a lot of this writing activity is in the creation and experience. At the end of the day on the eve of Halloween, I allowed asked them to dress up their pet rocks for their very first Halloween! My little creators went straight to work. The next morning when they came in, they were asked to write explaining to their rock what was going on in the classroom today. After all, they have no idea what Halloween even is and I'm sure our pet rocks were all very confused!

One of my favorite costumes. Can you guess what it is? 

The middle of our day was filled with a Halloween parade, a morning special, and a trip to a fellow teachers classroom to see their live wax museum in action! (Whew! We were sure busy!)

When we came back to class, we had about an hour to finish off our party. I decided to set it up in centers so that all of my friends could rotate through and get a chance to experience everything together.

We had a Photo Booth!

Let me tell you this was by far the best idea I had. I had a few parents come in, set up a backdrop, bring in a few props, some big sunglasses, a camera, and BAM! Instant fun. All of my students were able to go out into the hallway and snap some pictures with their friends. They all turned out adorable and my parent volunteers even turned the photos into a CD that I was able to download and put up on our class website! Bonus: I was able to enjoy the party without having to worry about getting a picture of every single person. It was wonderful.

We also had pin the brain on Frankenstien. The students were able to play a Halloween version of pin the tale on the donkey. They loved this too! My winners we rewarded with candy.

We created cheese-cloth ghosts! (disclaimer: these take two days to make as they must dry overnight. We started this project the day before Halloween) We blew up balloons, dipped cheese-cloth into a water and Elmer's glue mixture, and laid it on top of the balloon. On Halloween morning, we popped the balloon and added the felt eyes. They turned out to be adorable!

All of my students also had the chance to participate in a pumpkin candy toss. They were asked to stand on a tape line and toss candy corn into plastic pumpkins. If they made it into the pumpkin, they got the candy that was inside. I also gave each pumpkin a point value. They then added the points up to keep track of high scores! (I had to throw some math in there somewhere!) 

Our party was a success thanks to our volunteers and my cooperative and fun-loving kiddos. They made it all worthwhile! It was ball.