Happy Halloween!

As a kid, Halloween was always such a wonderful time! Halloween sort of lost its appeal as I got older and it became more about skimpy costumes and drinking too much. However, now that I am a teacher, I get to rekindle my love for Halloween with my students, when the holiday was all about creative/fun costumes, haunted houses, carving pumpkins, and of course....CANDY!

Schools where I have taught in the past do not recognize Halloween the way my current school does. Certain schools do not feel it is appropriate.  I remember the excitement around the Halloween costume parade at my elementary school growing up, and I was thrilled to hear that my students (and us teachers) participate in a parade at school on Halloween! The teachers are in costumes from the staff Halloween play that we put on for the students. This year, the play included skits from popular Aesop's fables. I was in "The Tortoise and the Hare" as a narrator, so I stuck with the Halloween theme by simply wearing a black witch hat with orange trim around the brim. <-- HEY! That rhymes :)

Since the parade didn't start until after lunch, I planned fun Halloween activities for the morning.

I had a Halloween Word Search for the kids at their table spots when they came in to school this morning.

During math, we had all kinds of fun games to play that involved using pieces of candy corn and m&m's as counters or place holders (that of course kids got to eat when they finished the games)!

In reading, we are talking about retelling stories and sequencing events in a story. We watched a silly  video where Goofy takes us through the process of haunting a house:



Then we filled out sequencing worksheets to practice retelling how to haunt a house successfully! Always comes in handy this time of year, I think....

If you don't already know, I LOVE BAKING! I didn't do it as often as I wanted to living in NYC because of the lack of space for working with my mixer, but now that I have a bigger kitchen, I am able to bake all sorts of treats! Halloween cupcakes are without a doubt one of my favorite treats to make. As soon as it hit October, I raided the supermarket shelves for Halloween cupcake decorations and ingredients:

I'm sick of just plain chocolate or vanilla cupcakes, so I decided I wanted to create a vanilla/chocolate swirl cupcake for my class Halloween treat. Since I don't have a TON of time, I went with store bought cake mix to keep it simple:

Isn't my spatula adorbs? I was in London with friends over the summer and snatched up one of Cath Kidston's signature backpacks. My parents were over in the UK a few months after I was, where my mom picked me up another Cath accessory. It makes baking so much more fun because of the cute, floral design! I couldn't wait to get into the kitchen and bake!

I mixed the vanilla batter first, scooped it into the cupcake trays, and then mixed up only HALF of the chocolate batter.











I put a dollop of the chocolate batter on top of the vanilla mix already in the liners.

 

                  ( I know, it kind of looks like doggie doo, but stay with me people!)

Then, I used a plastic knife to gently swirl the chocolate batter in with the vanilla:

Stick it in the oven at 350 for 21 minutes, and TA-DA!

Here is the end result, sprinkles and all:

The class LOVED the cupcakes, and are already asking when I can make them another cupcake treat! There's always Thanksgiving, my little turkeys :) 

I hope everyone has a fun-filled, safe Halloween! I can't wait to head home and hand out candy for the trick or treaters! I hope I bought enough, although I know that my fiance won't complain if there are a couple of extra fun-size Krackles or Mr. Goodbars around this weekend...