At the end of October, we had the children's favourite festivity: Halloween. On this date, children have the opportunity to dress like their favourite characters, enjoying themselves with their friends and family while going from door to door to trick or treat. In the before and after school, we also celebrated this day, allowing children to be creative while drawing, colouring, painting and building around this theme. Moreover, during this month, children demonstrated how they enjoy doing art, from drawing trees, haunted houses, to making bracelets and necklaces. Even though they showed their liking for many crafts, the activities children were more excited to do were melting beads, painting, and drawing. Then, throughout the month, the educator introduced activities around this, which fostered their imagination and sense of belonging, collaboration and friendship.
Each child enjoys different kinds of art activities, and as educators it is essential to provide age-appropriate materials following their interests. However, one that everyone wants, regardless of age, is melting beads. We made Halloween designs, which the children were very excited to do. This kind of activity fosters the development of their fine motor, cognitive, math and social skills. Children had to concentrate and focus on their actions, using their hands and a tweezer to carefully place the beads on the tray. The children smiled every time they finished their project and saw it melted. When someone could not do the design or got frustrated because it was not working out as they expected, the others always had a word of incentive or offered to help, bonding even more with each other.
In the week of Halloween, first, the children were able to make some decorations with plasticine, working their fine motor abilities. Then, the educator offered the children some Styrofoam boards, pumpkin carvers and toothpicks. They were asked to create with those and, if they needed something else, to let the educator know. As it was Halloween time, they built haunted houses. Initially, they wanted to do one house for each, but as they realized how much work it would be, they decided to do it together. Geetanjali and Olivia built a house together; they painted it and used their plasticine creations to decorate it. James M. did one house for himself, and Nathan helped him during the process. Carolyn did hers by herself, without anyone helping her. She painted the house black and used red to "Make it look like there is blood on it," as she said. This activity fostered not only their creativity but also a moment for them to collaborate, strengthening their relationships and creating a friendly and safe environment for them as they know that they can count on each other when needed.
