Halloween Gimcana

Halloween has come and gone, and now I need to find something else to teach in class! The actual day of Halloween I spent en route to France, but the day before Halloween, Friday, was the party at school. The morning was business as usual, but for the last two hours of the school day students got to choose between activities such as watching scary movies in English, carving pumpkins, making panellets, or participating in the Halloween Gimcana (treasure hunt).
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Of course, the Halloween Gimcana is what my students have been working on for the past two weeks. I don’t know why they called it a treasure hunt; they never explained that to me, but then again they don’t explain many things to me at school and it could have another meaning. Basically we had fifteen different games and the first and second year students divided up into groups and went room to room to play the different games. According to one of the English teachers, it was a success! Some games were simple like playing a memory card game or musical chairs, but others were messy and gross. One group had students look for candy in a bowl of flour and at least two groups had games involving yogurt.
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I chose to supervise one of the less messy games. My group had a great idea to take pictures of all the different students that came to play their game, so they wanted to make a Halloween background. It worked out perfectly, because mom had sent me spider webs and spiders for decorations. The game that my students played was a little weird: it was called “Terror-poly” like “Monopoly.” Half of the group chose a Halloween word and then read the corresponding question/directions for the other half. Some of the tasks included finding a hidden apple, impersonating a witch, drawing a cat, or finding the plastic spider in the tub of yogurt. It was fun seeing the different costumes that some of my students came up with (though not everybody dressed up). After the games we cleaned up (one student took home the spider web to scare her mother) and went to the pati for coca. See pictures of the party here.