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?

Market Day & Pumpkin Carving in China

My favorite time as a teacher overseas was the time around the holidays. Regardless of what your opinions are on Halloween, I think it's safe to say that any time there is candy, dressing up & carving pumpkins involved, it's fun & kids like it! It was even more fun for me to live Halloween through the eyes of my kids. For most of them, the parties we held in their classes were the first Halloween parties they'd ever attended. The pumpkins we carved were the first they'd ever carved. There's something special about being apart of that. Part of our tradition with our after school kids was to hold a Market Day & Halloween party around Halloween time. We taught in our home several days a week after school. These kids became like our own.
We gathered pumpkins for these parties for weeks. Among all of our classes & all of our kids, we needed about 20 for everyone to have one. We even drove way out into the villages, looking for pumpkins, to which we found none. Finally, we found a market just down the street from us, that sold the little pumpkin pie pumpkins, so we made a deal with a guy to carry to our house a crate of 20. I won't say how much money we spent on them but let's just say that we've realized that the $3 pumpkin bins of huge pumpkins sitting outside our grocery store here in Texas is a God send. It's funny how your normal changes, right? Our normal was lugging pumpkin pie pumpkins home for a gajillion yuan. We're still in awe over all the conveniences of America.


 Part of our Halloween Party day was to have a Market. As a reward system our students earned paper dollars over the semester & were able to spend it at market day. We stocked the table with tons of goodies, like; candy, toys, note pads, pencil sharpeners, stickers, etc. Kids go crazy for fun school supplies, don't they? In China, they have the best school supplies. Everything is shaped like food or animals.
In addition to Market Day & pumpkin carving, the kids were supposed to dress up in a costume. They did pretty good with what's available in China. We also had some delicious pumpkin bread & fresh whipping cream together, both of which they'd never had. It was a pretty fun party, I think. Since we had several classes, we have several pictures & groups of students. I'm bummed we don't have pictures of all our classes but I'm still cherishing these. I miss our kiddos so much. But I have another little one in my life now, Sophie! And we've carved our pumpkin, too. :)
Teaching them all about carving pumpkins.
Voila! Pumpkins carved!

I thought they all turned out pretty good. The pumpkin carving kits here in the States are blowing my mind this year. Those little serrated knives are amazing. If we could go back, I'd have my mom send me a ton. As you know, when carving pumpkins with kids, the adults do most of the real carving. My hands were pretty raw in some places using a regular knife for 10+ pumpkins. I can hardly believe how easy it is when you have that little kit!
Do you have any fun Halloween traditions?

Painted Eggs

Easter weekend I had the opportunity to share with my students about Easter. 

We of course talked about and watched a short video in Chinese on what Easter is all about, Jesus.

I can't really go into so much detail about that here. We then painted eggs! I saw a post on a relatives Facebook wall that asked the question of basically, "Why do Christians paint eggs?" The question was asked, because painting eggs is a pagan tradition and practice. Historically, eggs resembled fertility and were painted to represent spring and new life. At some point in Christendom, Christians started painting eggs red to tell the story of Jesus. The red was to represent Christ's blood shed for our sins on the cross and the cracked open egg resembled the empty tomb upon Jesus' resurrection. Actually, if you want to read some cool stories on the whole egg painting tradition read here. I'd like to tell you all the stories here but that would be plagiarizing. :)  

And as a side note on the topic of "why do Christians do pagan things" (in a sort of response to my relative) in Asia & many places, painting eggs & egg hunts and including Santa & gifts in Christmas activities, opens the door for the G*spel and deeper conversations. 

Regardless of it's pagan roots or disputed Christian roots, painting eggs, for our generation & many Christian families, has become one of the ways we celebrate Christ's resurrection and get excited for Easter. And I know my kids sure loved it! 

But on to what this post is really about, painting eggs with my students! They had tons of fun and I did, too!  I love the break in the routine to do creative, fun, hands on activities. When parents, especially Chinese or Korean parents, are paying you to teach their children, do fun, hands on activities, isn't viewed as learning or worth their money. But the excuse of a holiday, always allows for the fun stuff!

We used water colors! Which was actually so much fun and I think I prefer over egg dying. The kids get way more involved when they can paint!

We also used some glitter wax crayons, which would have been a nice touch, but we had some crazies in our bunch and the wax didn't dry but kept rubbing off.

Love this egg!

Ya. This was the end result after one of my students, Simon, used these. He was making a mess the entire time. It drove me crazy.

He would paint his egg and then dip it in the water to wash off the paint and say "Again, again!" See all that dirty water on the table, ya, Simon.

Simon's egg. Glitter wax crayon fail. Never again.

There's Simon in the background. :)

I loved these sweet pictures. It's just cool to see things in the eyes and through the drawing hand of children.

Jesus on the boat with the disciples. :) Cute.

Did you paint eggs around Easter?