It's Halloween, mate!

Happy Halloween everybody! We had a fantastic day today (mostly because I didn't have to plan and wear a costume for the day). I treated my students this morning to some pumpkin carving. They were very excited.  Most of my class had never carved a pumpkin before as Halloween is a sort of non-event here. Schools in Canada look like a haunted house, while here in Australia, it didn't even feel like Halloween. I think I may even miss it just a little.

 I started the day with a pumpkin prayer.  As I carved the pumpkin, we prayed for eyes (hearts) to see the love in everyone, forgiveness for sticking our nose (a cross) up at other people, ears (a Bible) to listen to God's word, and a mouth to share to God's word. The kids thought it was great.

 After, we estimated how much each of their pumpkins weighed.  Most of the kids were almost right on at 4-5 kg. They then had to estimate how many seeds would be in their pumpkins, then they were allowed to draw their pumpkin face and start carving.  I, of course, was as organized as usual and did not get any parent helpers, but the kids were great and were able to use the pumpkin carving kits to cut out the pumpkins themselves. I actually had to give very little help.  Just a little tutorial on how to use the 'knife' and off they went.  There weren't even any arguments about so-and-so getting to cut more and so on.

The final act of pumpkin carving was to put their seeds into piles of 10 and then count how many they had. Almost all of the pumpkins had more than 400 seeds and a couple even had over 500. They were amazed by how many were in there.  Part of my job tonight is to take the seeds home and bake them for the kids tomorrow.  They are getting a whole bunch of new experiences this week.