Halloween 2013

This year's Jack, handsome as ever!

This is the 7th consecutive year we celebrate Halloween at our school! We have been celebrating it since the first year of the school, and I don't think we'll ever stop because it's too much fun!!!

John, as the hungry zombie that he is, is trying to bite Thanos who is tempting him with a can of brains!

We don't celebrate Halloween in Greece. Nevertheless, I think it's educational and entertaining for Greek students to acquire knowledge of at least some basic cultural facts! Halloween is one of the holidays which offers the opportunity to us, teachers, to educate our students on the customs, tradition and history of the language of the countries Greek students try to learn. 

Thodoris loves dressing up!      

      


Every single class and students were involved and some of the older ones, but also young ones, arrived at school all dressed up, ready to scare everyone! This year, we decided to have a more relaxed attitude and enjoy the last week of October, always dedicated to Halloween!

 Efstratia, Ioulia and Ioannis enjoying themselves! 

The students had fun playing interactive games and reading, watching but also writing horror stories!!! You can try the British Council's LearnEnglishKids and LearnEnglishTeens websites, but also many others! Check out this one, too! Pinterest is a great source of inspiration! 

Our Franky-door! 

History Channel and National Geographic Society offer huge amounts of information, videos, texts that can be used in the classroom. However, the greatest source this year was...Youtube! Videos, cartoon, stories for every age, level and mood! But this is our favourite book of every 31st October.....

One of the greatest books for children's Halloween celebration is Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz and, of course, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Scary Stories 3. You can find a great variety of spooky stories, many of them containing a good sense of humor! The narration of the audio book is amazing! Try finding the videos of the stories on Youtube. There are some which can be shown in class. Surely, it's best to check them out first and then have your students watch them!

 Trick or treat bags

                                     

Last, but not least, trick or treating is an essential part of the week. Every student, even the seniors, come and get their bag full of candy!





You are welcome to see for yourself how much fun we had! Click here and here !

 Little monsters having fun! 

   

   
Happy Halloween! Until next year then.......

Happy Halloween, until next year!

As we do every year, we celebrated Halloween and had a lot of fun! Kids were excited about it, and they waited patiently for the trick or treat moment! Even the younger students anticipated this week, though they didn't really know what was all about. Other came in disguised as vampires and witches! We talked about spooky incidents and narrate and listen to scary stories. They practiced their listening skills by watching videos from famous films. We read several versions of Jack O' Lantern's story in class. It was a fun week both for students and teachers. Let us hope for a great one also next year! :)

See some of our pictures here 

Students talking about their favourite horror film.

Trick or treaters!

Happy Halloween, until next year.......

Halloween once more!

 


My kitchen table is full of photocopies, old and new material for the classes and new crafts ready to be created! 

 Many of my colleagues feel very hesitant towards even talking about this kind of holiday, but once you start, you never stop! There are so many ideas that teachers around the world are willing to share-and we are very grateful for it!- so there is no excuse!!!

A special thanks to all the pinners at Pinterest, a huge source of interesting and useful sites for teachers -and not only!

My Halloween Board on Pinterest 
The little old lady who wasn't afraid of anything
Wicked tips/crafts
Making Ghosts
Hanging bats
Looking for Dracula (so fun to perform it in the classroom)
31 days of Halloween 
Scary stories to tell in the dark (an absolute must! The kids love it!)
Halloween with Friends  and the worksheet from Busyteacher
Busyteacher Halloween worksheets
Flashcards
Corpse Bride 1 
Corpse Bride 2
Corpse Bride 3
List of Halloween movies for teens
Top 9 Halloween Movies for School-Aged Kids
The Village worksheet
Nightmare before Christmas worksheet 1
Nightmare before Christmas worksheet 2
Ghostbusters scene 1 - Great for practicing Conditionals (What would you do if you saw a ghost in the library?)
Ghostbusters: Venkman gets Slimed
King of the pumpkins 

DIY Angry birds masks 
Bugs Bunny Halloween
Twilight Zone worksheet 1
The Twilight Zone Companion Lesson Plans for Teachers
Halloween Songs for Kids
Halloween songs
Spooky Spooky - Halloween Song

Halloween Worksheets

Halloween Printable Worksheets

Halloween Worksheets and Printables

Halloween exercises and worksheets

Printable Halloween Worksheets for Kids

                                Have a great Halloween!

Halloween 2011 - Boo!

It's been fun as always! My older students decided to be creative and they came prepared to trick or treat! Here's a brief presentation.



http://photopeach.com/album/12v4jlh



And here's the link to our FB page where you can see most of our pictures!

Until next year!

Trick or treat? Getting spooked!

Trick or treat? Getting spooked!


My kitchen table getting ready for some Halloween action!

It's this time of the year once more! Halloween takes place every year for practically a week at our school. In my view, it's important for my students to learn something new about a different culture. And what's better than this opportunity of diverse celebrations. Experience taught me that Greek students find Halloween a little "strange" at first, however they eventually succumb to its magic!

My -last year's-Jack! (credits to my beloved mommy who has become an absolute expert in carving pumpkins over the years)

Younger students are usually taken aback by the decorations all around school and in the classrooms; they also declare of being afraid of the "ghosts and ghouls" and all the other mysterious creatures scattered everywhere. This is a good moment to make something clear: play with the young students, don't try to scare them. A great opportunity to do this is by starting with some arts and crafts projects. I often begin making some decorations in front of them so they wouldn't be so surprised when they come in for the actual celebration. Eventually, I "lure" them and they end up making the decorations themselves! That would be a nice time to begin something together! There is a variety of sites to get help from-there are so many of them, that sometimes it is overwhelming! Of course, you will soon get the hang of it and remember to store your creations for the next year's celebration or to bookmark sites and note down interesting ideas.

Young trick or treaters (an amature Greek version, wearing only masks)

From the youngsters to the older ones, students can get busy with activities such as card making, Halloween coloring pages, crafting, playing with flashcards and of course, watching "appropriate" spooky Halloween films and TV episodes for a classroom or even listening to some wonderfully narrated spooky stories.

Obviously, if you have never tried presenting something similar to your students, please don't get disappointed or discouraged by the lack of enthusiasm-not of the students!- but of the schools' owners or unfortunately, of your colleagues! If you carefully plan and make an organized presentation to your "boss", I'm sure that he/she will be convinced to try it at least once! I'm absolutely positive that when they'll see the students excitement, they will too embrace this celebration and make it a part of their annual program. I had never had that opportunity to do so when I was an employee, so now that I'm an owner, I have the time of my life every year! Give Halloween a chance and you'll never regret it!

Happy Halloween!

Useful links:

youtube vids:

Nightmare before Christmas

Scary stories

Alfred Hitchcock's Ghost Stories for Young People Part 1

Halloween Songs for Kids

Five Little Pumpkins

Witches' Brew--Hap Palmer

Famous Ghost Stories

Pumpkin Feels Lonely

Scary Halloween Story

Arts and crafts, printables, worksheets, history:

http://familyfun.go.com/halloween/
http://www.mothers-home.com/halloween/halloindex.htm
http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/halloween/
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/Halloween/history.htm
http://www.history.com/topics/halloween
http://www.halloweenghoststories.com/ (choose wisely)
http://seanbanville.com/2011/10/14/100-questions-for-halloween/
http://holidays.kaboose.com/halloween-printables.html
http://www.coloring.ws/halloween.html
http://www.mes-english.com/flashcards/halloween.php

Halloween once again

It's been the same since some years now: I'm always struggling to decorate my classroom the last week of October. My pumpkins are almost ready and I've found some great stories for listening, but also fun, practice. It's "Scary stories to tell in the dark" vol. 1, 2 and 3. I don't think that all of them are appropriate for classroom use, however there some amongst them really funny! I tried some of them last year (I didn't have vol. 2 and 3)and I loved the look on my students' faces after listening to them! Amused and spooked at the same time! Priceless!

Well, back to Halloween crafting!