This is Halloween!

We made Halloween masks last week in class!

Sadly, Korea does not celebrate Halloween.  Under any other circumstance this news would have brought me to my knees last week.  I love Halloween.  However, I had 20 classes of 5th and 6th graders in my hands, which proved to be a more than excellent way to get into the Halloween spirit.  It's like taking a kid with you to see the newest Disney movie that you've been dying to see, but felt too silly to see by yourself.

We had a good time. The lesson consisted of a brief history and a montage of Halloween pictures: bats, ghouls, witches, jack-o-lanterns, Dracula, Frankenstein, zombies, and Halloween costumes: kids their age dressed as skeletons and fairies, babies in costume, even dogs (they got a kick out seeing a chihuahua dressed as an angel). 

Quotables:
After showing them a picture of a witch.. Me: "Can anyone tell me what this is?"  One student: "A grandmother!"  .. Okay, I don't know what his grandmother looks like, but mine does not have a crooked nose, green skin, and a mole with a long hair on her chin.

Me: "Okay, good, it's a vampire! And what do vampires do?"  Students:  "Bite neck!" "Eat blood!" "Drink pee!" ... hmmm.. okay, here was an excellent teaching opportunity. "Okay good, vampires bite necks, but do we say 'eat blood??'''  "NO!"  "Good, No! We say 'drink blood'"  ..Now to address "drink pee".. ?..

Me: "Do you know what this is? It's a mummy!"  Students: "hehe, mummy.. mommy."

Of course, I had to show them clips from Michael Jackson's Thriller music video and two clips from my favorite childhood movies, "Hocus Pocus" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

Then came the fun part: masks! Any excuse to pull out the art supplies, right?

Sponge Bob!

Pororo! A Korean cartoon.

Unfortunately, the color is washed out on this one.  I don't know if you can tell, but this student made a Homer Simpson mask. I was so impressed because it's so hard to get this student to participate in class. As you can see, it was a struggle to get him to pose for a picture. But he did it! Yay!

Some students really got into it!

This one is just too cute

If she appears to be a little older than a 6th grader it's because she is. My co-teacher made a mask too! 

 Some kids really got into it by putting time and effort into their mask while others finished as quickly as they could.  Of course, candy was a "carrot and stick" for most of them.  Once they finished they held up their mask, said trick-or-treat, and got candy.  They had to have the full Halloween experience.. and what's Halloween without candy?