Make Shift Costumes

It's no secret that in China you can't buy things that are "normal" & easy for us to buy in the States, especially items that have to do with cooking, eating & holidays. A huge "unicorn" product, that you can barely find in China, are costumes. There are a few costume pieces that you can always find, but mostly you have to get creative.This made Halloween season super fun & quite interesting to see all the make shift costumes the kids came up with with items from home & by adding to those few pieces you can find. Here's some of the costumes you may find in a Chinese classroom. :)    Paper Masks As is the case anywhere, paper masks are all the rage.      Ghosts White clothing is an obvious choice for ghost-wear. If you have a white jacket, you have a ghost costume. Obviously.     The gold polyester witch hat.  Though costumes are hard to find in China, this costume is in abundance at all major grocery stores.      The Cape The cape is also readily available at all major grocery stores.     The Invisible Costume. Some kids just come in their normal clothes & act like whatever their "costume" that you can't actually see is. Below, CiCi was a kitty cat. Obviously.     The Puppet. Puppets are great, aren't they. Great costumes.      The Face Paint.  It's an easy go to & transforms you into any animal print clothing you have.     The Princess You can find these occasionally at the grocery store.      The Hat Hats transform everything.     The Plastic, Glitter Mask. Again, another grocery store common. Why did I say there weren't Halloween costumes in China?!       Then you'll also see lots of Combo costumes.  mask & capes     hats & masks     hats, masks & capes     masks & wands     see lots of capes, masks, princesses  
Tao Bao Costumes Every now & then, you'll get a student who ordered off line, from Tao Bao, which is like the Amazon of China. These costumes are more like our costumes at home & a little more elaborate.     It's always an adventure on dress up days to see what they come up with! And super cute. :)  China peeps. any other costumes I left out?

Halloween Class Parties in China

Carrying on with the Halloween circa '14 trend with our Halloween class parties at school. The Halloween parties at school were a little less exciting than the ones at our house but still fun for the kids none the less. For the school parties, we told all of the kids to come to class in costume & to bring candy to share with their tables. This has translated in the past to most of the classes as bring bags upon bags of food, candy & drinks. Last year I had to set guide lines for them. They were only allowed to bring candy, chocolate, cookies & water. It also had to fit in one grocery bag! And absolutely NO CHIPS allowed. Have you tried cleaning up after 30 kids with even 1 bag of chips among them? It's a disaster. So, no chips it was!

^ Gotta love those typos. ^
All the kids showed up in costume & with candy to share as instructed. The school also bought glow stick suckers for us to pass out to them. They exchanged candy & ran around in their costumes for the party. We also made human mummies & settled down to eat our candy while watching Hotel Transylvania.


I loved seeing all their make shift costumes. Tee hee. So cute. I'll have a whole other post just on their costumes.
How hilarious is this little pumpkin lantern? It lights up, which is why it has a HUGE battery pack stuck to the bottom of it. haha.
The oh so exciting light up suckers. I'm not gonna lie, I freaked out when I saw this. It's awesome.
How sweet is that? Though I don't know what it says about me as a teacher who gave the word Halloween as one of their spelling words the week before. haha.
Isn't this amazing?! It's a jack-o-lantern carved into a butternut squash. Love it. I don't even think he knew the difference.
 Peter, formally Pizza, was so proud of his jack-o-lantern.

The kids got creative with their candy bags.
Please notice the bread stuffed into this pumpkin make shift candy bag. NOT on the list of acceptable treats for bringing to this party. ;)

Some days teaching these 11 classes was ridiculously hard & exhausting but then days like this made it all worth it. That's how it always is, isn't it?