Halloween

Skull make up for the school day.

Ender and I have managed to recover since the fiasco that was last week. And just in time too, Halloween week proved to be incredibly busy.

Spider-man!

jack-o-lantern

Monday was the high school bizarre.  I signed up for face painting and was the only one manning the station until Ender came to assist me at the halfway point. We had close to 100 kids in 4 hours.

blue monsters

I felt like a zombie myself when it was all over.

one eyed monster

suit monster

devil

flaming skull

Last week I asked my students to make a design for our door for Halloween. They had three simple requirements:

1) It needed to be a monster.
2) That their designs consider the door as well as the space above the door and the lockers.
3) That some part of the window be left open so we can see in and out.

Door complete with zombie clowns.

Original Drawing by Nicole McDougall

What I got back were some really great drawings with lots of detail. The students voted on their favourite and  I delegated parts of the design for individual students to make. They did a really great job and got a lot of compliments from the other grade 7 and 8 students.

graveyard

November 2nd is write your own epitaph day as well as Día de los Muertos. To celebrate this opportunity to remember those who have died and to reflect on our own eventual grim fates, my class wrote small poems based on this lesson plan. They are intended to be humorous and while writing the poems proved to be more difficult for my students then I would have though, we had enough of the class complete a tombstone that we were able to put together a pretty nice graveyard.

old man

werewolf

lights

art teacher as Nixon-bum

The high school also threw a Halloween dance and costume contest. It was a chance to take pictures of all the great costumes the students put together.

Haunted house

Ender and his grade six class transformed his classroom into a haunted house for Halloween night. The students made all of the decorations, hung the traps and some volunteers even gave up trick or treating to scare those brave enough to venture inside.  Once they made it through the haunted house the kids got candy and then made their way back through for more scares. 

Haunted house costumes

 There is now a thick blanket of snow outside and the temperature is steadily dropping. Before long the lake will freeze over and the winter roads will open. Garden Hill is transforming before our eyes and personally I quite like the change. At the very least the snow is covering up the garbage.

Until next year...