Trick or Treat? | Highlights of our Halloween Day at House of Knowledge!

On Monday, October 31st, an exciting Halloween party full of fun, surprises, and laughter was held at House of Knowledge International Kindergarten!

Halloween, one of the most traditional and beloved festivals in western countries, is very popular among all children. The festival nowadays has a carnival like atmosphere where people can enjoy dressing up and participating in a variety of fun games and activities. It is also one of children’s “Favorite day” of the year.

What did our children get up to on this day? At House of Knowledge, you can see vampires, elves, witches, monsters, ghosts, and super heroes descend onto the campus and demand their share of candy.

It was Halloween and the children as well as teachers had a great time with lots of Halloween mini projects such as making and painting stress balls, decorating Halloween cookies, competing in pumpkin carving, exploring spooky creatures, and of course…collecting lots of treats and sweets from adults!

Today, we would like to take you to review some of the exciting moments of our children’s Halloween Celebration Day on campus. Let’s take a look together now!

Dressing Up in our Favorite Costumes

As Halloween morning arrived on October 31st, the gate of our campus opened, not to our usual fresh-faced children, but to ghastly ghouls, wicked witches, super hero, fairy princess, spine-tingling skeletons, and supermen. The children were very excited to see each other all in costumes and they enjoyed talking about what they were and why they wanted to dress up in that particular character.

During the morning circle time, the children sat together and sang a Happy Halloween song, and all our “Halloween creatures” were fully ready to have a wickedly wonderful time taking part in all the games and activities their teachers had prepared for them.

Learning stations

The children did lots of Halloween mini projects throughout the day to explore and to have fun!

To get lots of candies and sweets, the children firstly need have a very big bag to hold them——for this reason, our children spent some very enjoyable time decorating their trick or treat paper bags and used stickers, shiny paper, eyes sprinkles, and colouring.

Once finished, the children moved to “Decorating your cookies!” station which the teachers have prepared for children for today. The children used different colored paper to create monsters with goggly eyes and also with ghostly faces; they had made very fun characters using their hand prints and shapes.

At the “making and learning station”, the children had a slime making activity for today where they could get to make and play with glow in the dark slime. During the class activities time, the children also had a selection of Halloween books and they enjoyed listening to the spooky stories in the dark classroom by the glow of flashlight… How full a day for our children to celebrate their fascinating Halloween Day!

Hands-on activities

The children made ghost pom pom launchers today! They did this by attaching a balloon to the bottom of a decorated spooky cup and shooting the pom poms out when pulling the balloon.

Besides the pom pom launchers, one other of the most interesting activities for today’s Halloween Day was to use Halloween balloons and fill them with rice to make Halloween sensory bags (the stress balls). The children loved it–they each chose their favorite balloon and then got to work filling them with rice and when finished, the children tied them up and played with each other.

Gym activities

At Halloween Day, the gym game was a fun spider-catching game for the day! The children rolled a dice to find out how many jumps they could do to catch as many spiders from the web as possible. It was great to watch everyone get involved and jumped around.

Besides the web spider game, the children also had a Halloween bowling game. They used a light up ball to knock down the spooky ghosts cups into a spiders web. This was a little bit challenging for our younger age group children as they had to roll the ball but many of the children wanted to throw or kick it; hence the rolling skills were something the children felt curious to learn and try for today.

Pumpkin carving

How can we have a Halloween party without a pumpkin? Children decorated and carved pumpkins at home with their families and then brought them into school to show off to their peers.

When finished, the children placed their pumpkins in the campus piazza area, and then each class started to vote for their favorite one—some children liked the one that ‘wears’ a mask, some children liked the one with special flashlights, and some voted for the pumpkins that were pulled by a fancy car. The children used stones and placed them next to their favorite one; they were all very excited to see who would be the final winner!

It was very exciting to see all our children have opened up their minds and applied lots of creativity in designing and making their own pumpkin faces.

Trick or Treat Explorations!

During afternoon time, children from each class lined up and went for a “Trick or Treat” hunt. Our Principal Tina and Chinese Principal Charis, as well as our nurse, bao’an, and all the teachers have prepared candies and treats for the children.

The children needed to say “trick or treat” and also say “thank you” after getting the treats, which was also a very good chance for children to practice their manner and politeness when communicating with people.

This was also a very nice experience for the children to really get to learn the western culture of “trick or treat” as well as the way to celebrate the Halloween Day.

After getting lots of candies and treats, now it is party time for children to enjoy! All our children enjoyed many delicious “Halloween-themed” cookies, fruits, cakes, and candies that the school prepared for them. Some of our children also started to dance and they volunteered to do a fashion walk to present their costumes and characters to their friends.

How nice it is for everyone to unite at HoK as a big community family and to celebrate this lovely Halloween Day together.

Summary

What a fun and festive Halloween Day!

We hope all our children have gained numerous joyful moments and unforgettable memories for the day.

As you can see, at House of Knowledge where children come from different countries around the world, we celebrate the cultures combining the best of east and west.

Getting to learn about a culture is not solely about guiding children to learn what things they would do, but also, the children need to fully get immersed into the surroundings and the atmosphere; to open up their curious minds and to participate in fun activities so as to experience a variety of things that people usually do on this occasion; and what’s more, to also learn about the social manners from the cultural perspective.

We appreciate all our teachers and staff’s efforts in working together to make this Halloween Celebration Day a big success and it was so great to see all our children had learned a lot about this traditional western holiday while having lots of fun with their peers and teachers throughout the entire day.

In this beautiful season of autumn, House of Knowledge continues to deliver an education provision and schooling experience that encapsulates creative thinking, social communication, cooperation, global mindset, and all our other core values to enable our children to experience more of their surroundings and the environment for their colorful daily Kindergarten life-the place for all children to explore, to invoke them to be thinkers, creators, and doers.

Thank you for reading this article and we look forward to sharing more campus updates with you in the near future!