Halloween English Lessons & Classroom Halloween Party, 2025

 Hello, here is yet another class party I would like to share from last semester. Halloween fell on a school day, so I celebrated with a class Halloween party that incorporated their class projects from the week. 

One project, which I saw on TPT, is making synonym/antonym gravestones and ghosts. I found some free gravestones to print. They had to write their choice word with five synonyms on the front, followed by five antonyms on the back. They could research synonyms and antonyms on Google. That was completed after an introduction to synonyms and antonyms on the Monday prior, so I drew grass and made a graveyard/ghost display.

The other assignment that ended up taking all week or longer was a symbolism mask assignment. Students were to draw ten images on one side of their mask designs that each symbolized something about them (what they believe, love, the hobbies they do, their personality, anything). On the other side, they were to write out ten "I am..." statements to describe themselves, applying repetition and more specifically, anaphora. On Halloween day they all got to 'dress up' and we did a class photo in each class featuring everyone in their masks. 

I planned several Halloween-inspired English games as well. One was to design a pumpkin on paper that clearly included symbolism and was themed around a particular book, character, or movie. Another used charts and involved rolling die to prompt a scary creative story. My favorite was where they worked in pairs with whiteboards. One partner had to describe a monster with as many adjectives as possible while the other partner had to draw it. They had five minutes and had to face away from each other until the drawing was done, then everyone revealed their masterpieces and partners swapped roles. Examples of some of these activities are shown below.

As far as the decorations go, I got the spiderwebs, spider dish, and balloons from Dollar Tree. I cut some paper plates into hexagons to look more web-like, too. The treats came from Aldi and a dollar store. 

Thank you for visiting, I hope you find this helpful! 

-Lauryn 

Handmade Mysterious Benedict Society Costumes (Disney Version)

 Hello everyone, it has been so long since I have had time to create a post. This is an overview of how I created our Mysterious Benedict Society group Halloween costumes this past October. It's not exactly a tutorial, but I will try to describe in summary how I made each. 

Cosplay inspiration:

Ours:

For Constance, I found the perfect plaid pattern on thrift store pajama pants, which I cut and sewed into a shawl (I basically just needed to hem and attach two rectangles). I used extra strips for hair bows. I also found a pink, long button-up shirt at the same store. I had to trim the sleeves, add plaid to the tips, and hem them. I hot-glued more of the extra plaid fabric to the buttons to make them match. I bought long white socks at Dollar Tree. That's all there was to it! 

For Mr. Benedict, we already had a hat and grey face paint, so I painted a beard and used Dollar Tree yarn to make hair. The shirts/jacket were thrift store finds, as was the tie. This costume was basically finding and matching up parts, it did not require much creating. 

For Reynie we bought a green sweatshirt at a thrift store, then my brother cut it into a vest and painted a gold trim. He had tan shirts, I got him long mismatched socks at Dollar Tree, and the shirt came from the thrift store, too. 

Finally, for Kate I bought a hat and jacket that were the right materials but wrong colors. I also found a striped shirt and orange-brownish pants. All of the thrift store supplies including those were bought at a big sale at our local Freedom Hill store. I mixed acrylic paints with fabric softener and painted the hat green, and all of the jacket. The jacket took many, many layers and several days since I had to wait for each layer and side to dry. 

I hope somebody who sees this costume idea knows what The Mysterious Benedict Society is unlike everybody we encountered on Halloween, and if you appreciate the series as much as I do, perhaps you'll find this idea useful for the future. 

Thanks for visiting!

-Lauryn 

A Licorice-Themed (Halloween-ish) Birthday Party

 

Hello, today I am excited to share a party I never posted from way back in September I did for my grandma. I had no idea what theme to do, and I was inspired when sometime near her birthday she mentioned how she loved licorice, which I already knew, but in desperation for a theme a thought that perhaps licorice could be my theme. Her birthday is the month before Halloween, so I ended up doing not only licorice and sweets for the décor, but also a bat and dark, moody/elegant colors like burgundy and black with blush pink, other pinks, and tan. I used fabric cut into long strips for the background of the display (from fabric donated to me as I mentioned in a previous post and had on hand), all looped around a string or fabric strip at the top. I draped the fabric over a pegboard. I made matching kabob sticks with Dollar Tree candies and licorice, and also got Dollar Tree cookies. The big pink candy decoration was fabric tied around a balloon. The licorice stick decoration next to it was black fabric hot-glued to a recycled protein powder container. The licorice-looking word banner was made of hot glue on cardstock letters all painted black. 

I hope this is helpful for other licorice/candy lovers with upcoming birthdays or as Halloween party inspiration!

-Lauryn