Halloween Party at School

This year I started a health club with one of my teaching partners and about 15 7th and 8th graders. For their 1st project i asked them if they wanted to organize a Halloween party for the school, and they responded with an immediate "DA!" (YES). Now, this may not seem like a health related topic, but i assure you it is. The great thing about teaching the subject of "health" is that pretty much everything falls under it, because we not only teach about physical health (nutrition, exercise, diseases, puberty, hygiene, etc.), but we also teach about mental and social health as well...which opens up the door to pretty much everything. :o]

They only had about 1 month to prepare, and this is what they came up with (I was pretty impressed).

This is my favorite jack-o-lantern...i love how they turned the top upside down!

I'm not quite sure what the red blotch is supposed to be on this poster...blood?...from what, i don't know, but the rest of it is cute. ;o]

I love these accordion paper pumpkins they created!

The party, like all other school events, took place in the hallway.

This was a donation box they made for future projects. They received over 60 MDL (about $3), which they were very excited about!

They did face painting at the entrance to the hallway. They really did a great job at face painting!

Apparently Moldova doesn't have actual face paint or costume makeup, so they literally paint actual paint on their faces (including lips).

Final results:

My favorite part was their costumes. They reminded me of when i was a kid, when we had to get creative making our own costumes...before those Halloween mega stores were around, which pretty much sell super cheap, overly slutty costumes. It was nice to see some creativity.

Here's Julia, the Vice President of the club, explaining the agenda of the party.

So, at every event i've been to at my school, musical chairs ALWAYS happens. When we were preparing for this party, i tried to switch it up a bit and offer more Halloween-specific ideas, like the mummy wrap, which they said they were going to do, and they even bought the toilet paper to do it...but, alas, the power of musical chairs took over. 

They had other activities planned as well...but the only one that actually happened, was musical chairs. Then everyone just wanted the ubiquitous dance party...happens every time. They're so serious about dance here, about a dozen girls even busted out a choreographed dance...it was like straight out of a movie that suddenly bursts out in song and dance...but for realz...it was a bit surreal.

Here's our club. Not everyone is there, but these are the more dedicated members. I'm on the left, if you couldn't tell from my "costume" ;op (yes, they painted my lips black too). I wore a sweatshirt with the symbol that's on the Moldovan flag and told everyone i was Moldovan for Halloween. They liked it.

Calea curcubeului (The Way of the Rainbow)

Since all of my reviews with my classes last year was Jeopardy themed, this year i decided to switch it up. This is basically Candyland on steroids! 

As you can see below, the chalkboard is the game board. The game markers are on the left (the toothbrush and toothpaste, soap, and grapes). It starts at the upper left black box and zig-zags it's way to the Trick-orTreat bag at the end on the bottom right.

The students were divided into 3 groups (hence the 3 game markers). When it was a group's turn, i threw the ball to someone in the group. They came up and took a card from the face down cards (to the right of the candy bowl). Just like in Candyland, the cards were marked with 1 of 5 colors, which corresponded to the colored cards with the pictures on them. The cards with the pictures represented 1 of 5 topics we've covered so far (black = review of topics from last year, purple = handwashing, orange = immune system (it's a white blood cell on it), brown = tuberculosis (i know, it looks like something else, but that's what TB looks like under a microscope), and yellow = dental hygiene). So if the student picked a card with a yellow box on it, they would pick a question from the dental hygiene cards (questions were written on the other sides). If they answered correctly, they moved their game piece forward to the nearest box that matched their chosen color. If they answered incorrectly, they had to move backwards to the closest box that matched. If they landed on a spot that was already occupied, it sent the team that was already there all the way back to the beginning. Also, just like in Candyland, there were 2 shortcuts, that went both forwards and backwards.

Here are the game pieces:

Out of the 5 colors, 1 of each color had candy on it, so they would get a piece of candy from the candy bowl when they landed on them.

I also drew 5 Halloween related pictures. If they drew one of the matching pictures from the face down pile, they could choose any color of question they wanted, and then would land on the matching picture...even if it was behind.

Here are some of the face down card examples. Some of the cards had 2 boxes (and if you've played Candyland, you know what that means) which meant that they would get to go 2 places forward instead of just 1.

Here's the trick-or-treat sack at the end. Whichever team got there first won candy for the whole team.

The kids LOVED this game! (So did i ;o]). As you can see, this is the Halloween version. For other reviews i'll make versions related to whatever upcoming holidays there are.