I was so stoked to teach this week, 6 easy lessons on Halloween! Just what I needed for the week I had to teach 6 make up classes for the ones I’m missing next week to go to Nanjing & Shanghai.
To prepare for class I wiki-ed Halloween (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween). I didn’t have a firm handle on the origins of Halloween and its traditions and I wanted to be prepared. Intriguing article by the way, really sad that most reported cases of candy poisoning actually turn out to be the child’s parent’s fault.
1st class: I begin by explaining the origins of Halloween, the Celtic belief that on October 31st the Spirit world had power to cross into the real world and haunt the living . People would dress up to scare the spirits and keep evil at bay. Halloween began being celebrated in America in the 1840’s when the Irish, fleeing from the potato famine, brought over many traditions.
We still dress in costumes today but not all are scary. It is a time now to dress up in fun costumes that can represent anything.
Jack-o-Lanterns we originally carved into turnips and were passed of a fable about a man named Jack who tricked the Devil into the trunk of a tree and then was cursed to roam the earth with the only light he had at the time a candle.
2nd class: By the second class I had dropped the part about Halloween being brought over by the Irish and where Jack-o-Lanterns originated from.
3rd class: The Celtic tradition was gone by the third class, it was just getting to hard to explain and they really didn’t get it.
4th class: I think I finally had the structure down but trying to explain costumes to a culture who never dresses up is depressing. I would ask them to think about what they would be if they went trick-or-treating, it was liking pull teeth! For heaven sakes who doesn’t have a costume on the tip of the tongue? Even if that might not be really what you want can’t you just think of something, anything?
5th class: I had watered it down even further and just gave examples of what we did rather than try to explain why we did it. Costumes: Scary outfits most popular, Children often wear fun costumes. Parties: Bobbing for Apples, the String game (what do we call that game?), watch a scary movie or go to a haunted house. Jack-o-Lanterns a fun tradition to scare away evil spirits.
6th class: To be honest I’m glad I had watered it down because the last time I gave the lesson it was to my most difficult class. I had a hard time keeping their attention with this version. I can’t imagine if they had been my first class.
The blackboard by the end of the lesson.
So I will enjoy Halloween all on my own. I do appreciate that we have a fun Holiday that allows us to dress up at least once a year. Most of my students had never heard of the word costume and didn’t understand why it was so appealing, oh how deprived.
I walked into class feeling completely prepared with a min by min planned lesson. It never goes as planned, the children caught be off guard from the very beginning. I decided to make the board festive and drew a Christmas tree, I left it blank as I continued setting up for class.
My favorite had to be the Primary song “Once There was a Snowman.” First we built a snowman on the board and sang the song and helped in melt.
