I was forewarned this would be the most effort I ever put into any project at work. After it's done, it all get cleaned up instantly like it never happened. You don't even really get to see the kids afterwards to see what they thought of it, because they leave right after. Most will want to look tough and come out saying it wasn't even scary. A few told me it was too scary. In one students run on sentence she said:
"Niki teacher, that haunted house was way too scary the scariest thing it was so scary I want no Halloween party again after this was scary so scary haunted house soooooooo scary never ever ever again I was too scared from haunted house's too scary no teacher never again"
My first criticism!
So it's pretty thankless for a lot of work, let's talk about how it went down.
Three groups, kindergartners in the morning, young elementary in the afternoon, and older elementary in the late afternoon. The schedule consisted of three primary parts: costume contest, games, and haunted house.
The games were a fairly consistent part. We had a bowling game and ring toss. Last year they had run this kind of relay race that we decided against doing because of available space. Instead I had joked about using the ping pong ball-like eye balls to play a version of eye-ball beer pong -totally a joke. But it did inspire the game we decided on. Four bowls were tapped to a slightly elevated mat. The kindergartners got 6 eyes to throw, and the elementary students got 3, there was a line that they must stand behind in order to toss the ball and have it land in the cup. Most students managed to get one, and it was almost always the last ball they threw. All who participated did get a candy prize however. If you didn't already guess, I oversaw the eyeball pong.
The costume contest was quite funny. It was sort of a model walk to show off your costume with a little dance and you win some candies. The kindergartners got very into it. The winner, dressed as Woody from Toy Story, got so excited to dance he just kept spinning and smiling until he fell. His older sister had pulled a similar stunt; after pretending to fall asleep she began rapidly jumping and touching her toes mid air. Almost every student did some kind of performance. The younger elementary students had maybe 3 or 4 who were more interest in dancing to get the prize than to show off any costume. The costume contest died with the older elementary student, most were not in costume and the rest seemed to be all witches. No one went.
The haunted house I suspected would be most fun for the kindergartners.
I was wrong. In order to get anyone to even consider going in, we had to have the lights on. There would be no jumping out and scaring them, only walking them through by hand. The girl who gave me that run on sentence cried in the main chamber after pressing the button on the mirror. Another girl turned back just before the exit saying it was too scary and probably scared herself more reliving the whole thing again. One the other end of the spectrum we had many students who seemed more or less unphased. One of my students is exceptional with reading, writing, and all sorts of academia, but struggles with more social inclusion. It really feels like he is a very intelligent alien visiting Earth learning about our ways. He went through the haunted house as if it was a museum of things the earthlings find 'scary'. He would smile and point at the things scaring the other students "Wow, skeleton. Look, ghost." He was basically part tourist part tour guide. He went through twice, maybe like a science experiment he need to be such his results weren't a fluke.
The younger elementary kids got a little more fun. Now we had the lights off and were positioned to scare. We failed miserably on the first few being greeted with a "anneyeong!" after each scream. With a little more help from the fog machine we finally got someone to cry! Which was apparently out objective. Unfortunately it was a new student who had never experience Halloween so that wasn't exactly...the right person to scare. It was so dark I could only try to guess the students from the sounds of their voices. Some were clearly trying to do the same things with us:
Teacher: AHHH!!
Student: AH!.... Niki Teacher?
The eldest elementary students were the best. The were over the whole, act-invincible-craze that the younger elementary kids were locked in, they were honest with themselves. They whimpered, cried, yelled, many got so scared they fell over in fright and some even turned around and went back!
Then, just like that it was over. The last on exited and we began tearing down the walls.
Everything was back to normal by the time we had planned to leave the school. The director was busy but treated us to dinner. Another dinner where I ate three servings of bbq'd meat. Amazing, amazing day.
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