Halloween Non-Party Party

So, in my school, we are not allowed to have holiday parties. :( This is never sadder than on Halloween, when the kids are SO SO CRAZY EXCITED to wear their costumes and eat candy. While I know I would be complaining if they DID wear costumes, because I'm sure they'd get in the way, as it is, I wish I could see those costumes!! However, the big bummer for us is that we aren't allowed to have a class party - even though it's a half day! This year, we got around it and had what we called a "Halloween non-party" - still fun, but without the "party" aspect!

I asked for donations of individually wrapped candy from the parents, and WOW, I got an awesome response! (I work in a pretty poor area, so this many donations are VERY rare!) I stayed late the night before packing Ziploc bags so each kid would have a variety of types. Man, they were BULGING! I think every kid ended up with 20 or so pieces of candy. Holy sugar coma, batman!

We put those bags to good use, though! My awesome teaching partner had picked up a bunch of freebies from the blog-o-sphere, so we made bar graphs and pictographs, we classified by different characteristics, and we compared two pieces in a Venn Diagram. The kids were BEGGING to eat a piece by the end!

After spending about 45 minutes describing, classifying, and graphing our candy, I allowed everyone two pieces of candy and put on a Scooby-Doo Halloween episode (is it just my group, or do third graders just LOVE Scooby-Doo?!) Then the fun really started! We took shifts heading out into the hallway for our Halloween writing activity: sensory boxes! I had a few boxes left from Trunk or Treat at church, and my teaching partner brought in a few more. We had:

Witch eyeballs: Peeled grapes

Zombie brains: Cold cooked spaghetti

Witches' fingers: Slimy carrots

Pumpkin guts: Jell-O

Witches' tongue: Banana

Monster ears: Apricots

The kids LOVED it! I wish I'd taken pictures of their expressions as they reached in. It was awesome! They had to describe the feel of the item on their paper in three words, and it was the slimiest, gooiest, stickiest, stringiest description writing ever!

Happy Halloween!!