Halloween at Kindergarten

Since we live in Utah and no one objects (at least not enough people) to the celebration of Halloween, the schools kind of pretend it's not controversial and just go with the festivities. I love this! When I taught in DC, I had so many students from so many backgrounds and so as not to offend anyone, anytime, the district had put in place specific guidelines of what could and could not be celebrated. Which basically amounted to nothing. We'd make bats but not because they're associated with Halloween just because you might see them in the fall. And we'd do things with pumpkins but not again because it had anything to do with Halloween. It kind of took a lot of the fun out of the Holidays.
So I'm OVERJOYED to be in a state where Holidays are celebrated openly and I get to participate now with Ethan. Most of their morning Thursday was reserved for the class Halloween party. I got to go help (thanks to my wonderful Visiting Teacher who watched the littler kids) and we played letter/shape bingo.
This is how I know Ethan has a fabulous teacher:
A few days after volunteering, I get a card in the mail from her with a nice thank you letter and this adorable picture on the front. So much fun to have a picture of me and Ethan together in his class. How thoughtful is she?
They rotated around 4 or 5 other fun crafts/activities and then all got to add magic dust (pixie stixs) to the cauldron which promptely started smoking from the dry ice.

Some other mom makes cakes professionally so they even got super fabulous cupcakes.

And after the party at Kindergarten was over, Ethan still got another party at his Spanish preschool. These are 2 of his cute teachers. He's been amazing up lately with how comfortable he is with Spanish. He used to only speak a little and only when we really tried to get it out of him (or when he saw a service person who looked hispanic- like McDonald's cashiers and store clerks- kind of embarrassing actually but he does try to speak to them). Now he just randomly decides he'd rather speak in Spanish. Friday night Taylor took them all to the local high school's football game and they came home REALLY late and REALLY full of soda and junk food. As I walked in his room to help him with his pajamas, he said to me "hola mama. Me duele las cabeza y mi estomogo no se siente bien." Translation: my head hurts and my stomach doesn't feel good. Oh, I replied I'm sorry and put him to bed laughing the whole time. He woke up an hour later and threw up though so I'm pretty sure he really felt like that, still not sure why he felt like telling me in Spanish but cute nonetheless.

So Thursday was a fun Halloween filled day for him and then Friday was even more so. All of school Friday was devoted to another small party and a Halloween parade throughout the school. This is the only picture I got as they went wizzing by- luckily you can tell how happy he is that I don't even need a re-do.

Some would argue this was 2 days of wasted time but I disagree. Even as adults, most of us don't LOVE every minute of our jobs. We look forward to breaks or weekends. I personally look forward to naptime and bedtime unabashedly even though I love spending time with my kids and I love being a mom. So I can't blame kids for looking forward to recess or art class. And I think it helps teachers to have something fun to hang over their heads as a reward. So bring on the parades and parties. Ethan loves them and he loves school and he's learning more than I expected so I couldn't ask for more.