A Gig on Halloween

October 30, 2024. The Los Angeles Dodgers win the World Series. The next day was Halloween. And I had a middle school assignment. 

Let's just say I was anticipating the worst. 

And... It turned out that I had two periods of advanced math of eighth graders. Which was helpful. 

(Eighth graders, so a bit crazy. And Halloween, so hopped up on sugar. And the whole World Series thing, which meant many not in Halloween costumes were in Dodger gear. But advanced, so better behaved than the usual eighth grade class.)

And then the last group of the day walked in...

This was a co-taught, grade level class. Of twelve students. 

The co-teacher took over (as usually happens; when one of the teachers is out, the other, who knows the class and the routine, takes lead). She attempted to explain the work. They weren't having it. 

They were working on combining like terms. This can be tricky, but it's so important (as it pops up in math classes after this), so we want to make sure the students understand. Unfortunately, when kiddos are in play mode, it's hard to tell if they understand the concepts being taught.

I had students on their phones. I had one boy whistling. When I asked him to stop, he denied he was doing it. (It was him. I saw him.) Two students wouldn't stop talking (about something unrelated to the assignment). 

Only one boy in the class seemed to understand the assignment. It was too easy for him. 

Mrs. F (the co-teacher) told me that this boy was supposed to be in the advanced math class, but unfortunately the previous year he hadn't done his classwork, so he got a D in his math class. One can't get a D in the class and get put into the harder class the next year. 

Mrs. F shrugged. It was his own fault, really. 

I was quite happy when class was over. 

Mrs. F told me the class was usually like that. She and Mrs. G (the teacher I was subbing for) are having the worst time with the group. I could see why.

Halloween could have gone worse, I suppose. Next year it'll fall on a Friday.

How to Address a Postcard

For the week of Halloween, I managed to catch a seventh grade world history class. (Imagine seventh graders hopped up on candy and costumes. Halloween is not a fun day to sub.) 

The assignment for the day had to do with the Byzantine Empire. (I couldn't resist playing "Istanbul (not Constantinople)", the They Might Be Giants version, for them. This still didn't help them figure out how to pronounce Constantinople.) 

They had a question where they were to write an imaginary postcard to a "friend back home" about the wonders of Constantinople. 

It's a pretty straightforward question. I see these sorts of things in their assignments all the time. But there was one big snag...

They had no idea how to address a postcard.

I was surprised, although once I thought about it, I shouldn't have been. Who uses physical mail any more? They definitely don't send stuff, although some of them admitted to getting birthday cards mailed to them from family. They don't pay attention to the envelopes. 

Sigh.

So, I attempted to show them how an address should be written. (Luckily, I had access to the in class TV, so I created a slide with the school's address on it.) 

Oh, there was whining. Many just copied the school's address as the address they used. (They were supposed to make up an address in the known world from the period we were discussing.) 

In the end, I was happy they got the written portion on the correct half of the postcard. Some had used the lines for the address as where they wrote it. And, of course, some weren't doing much of anything as it was Halloween and a sub day and all they wanted to do was play.

The question, really, was more trouble than it was worth. Considering all the anachronisms inherent in the question (mail delivery? street addresses? postcards?), there are much better ways of formulating a written response than getting the students to address a postcard.

(Although, I appreciated that the work was in the book and on paper. The last time I covered this class, the internet was out for the day.)

A Small Costume

I still haven't been motivated to do much of anything yarn-y, but luckily, that wasn't the case four years ago. I have something to wear to work today: 

It's just that touch of Halloween that I like. Perfect.

Happy Halloween.

Pumpkin Donuts With Sprinkles

The previous week, we painted pumpkins. I wrote about it here. 

It was the week before Halloween. And the teacher had stopped by to drop things off for her students before school. She wrote them notes. She left some candy. And she left behind some small pumpkins. 

One of the instructional aides and I discussed what to do with them. And that's when I remembered something I had seen when looking up design ideas for the painted pumpkins the previous week. Pumpkin donuts. 

I really, really wanted to paint the pumpkins like donuts. 

So, we did. 

Day one: we painted just the top to look like frosting. Then, on day two, we added sprinkles: 

I got to do a couple (for an example to the students):

So fun. 

(The instructional aide did one more pumpkin, and I have to share that as well...)

Pumpkins that look like donuts are good for Thanksgiving, right? 

Bubble Gum Physics

Last week was kind of slow, so I went back into my archives for a #ThrowbackThursday post. I searched "Halloween" and found this post from November 2, 2007. Funny thing is, I remember this day. It was a cool assignment. And the kiddos behaved as eighth graders would for such a thing. 

As you know, Wednesday was Halloween. And I covered an 8th grade science class.

The teacher left them a lab assignment. "Bubble gum physics." The object was. . . Well, I think the ultimate object was to learn about speed (measuring it and figuring out how to find it) and all the calculations that go into it. What they actually did, though, was to chew gum.

Gum is not allowed in school. So, using gum in a class experiment was a treat. It's just that it would probably have been a better treat if the assignment wasn't overseen by a substitute teacher!

Well, all things considered, it went pretty well. I actually spent the day reminding them how to round numbers and how to take averages. And I had to make sure that they didn't take more than one piece of gum. Unfortunately, at that I failed. How do I know? I was given 380 pieces of gum. By the end of the day, I had four. 35 students per period, 5 periods. . . The math just doesn't work out, kind of like most of the math they were trying to do.

Dancing AP

Some days are just strange.

It was Thursday. Halloween. I ended up covering Spanish. (The teacher had taken the Spanish club to Olvera Street for Day of the Dead celebrations.)

Fifth period was an AP (advanced placement) class. The lesson plans had them "joining" their class on the CollegeBoard website (which, of course, hit some technical glitches) and then going outside to practice their song.

Luckily, the smell of wildfires wasn't as bad as it had been earlier in the day. And the winds had died down somewhat.

When I saw "practice their song", I assumed they'd be singing. But when I finally joined them outside, I discovered it was a dance they were doing.

A couple students got stuck "joining" the class. First, most of them had to create an account, and they had the usual issues with the log in then not working. You'd think kids that age would know all the tricks, but they had the same issues we all do with these things.

This dance? They were really bad at it.

Apparently, they were to perform it the next day. So, they badly needed the rehearsal. Things did not go so well.

They were not in sync with each other. A third were at any given time not doing what the others were doing. And until someone started calling out the steps, most kinda stumbled through the whole thing.

Deep sigh. At least they were aware of how not ready they were.

What dance were they doing? I bet most of you are familiar with it...

And in this video? They're way more in sync than period 5 ever got. (The first minute and a half is what they did. At the two minute mark, they switch into the fast version. Period 5 attempted the fast version. Train. Wreck.)

The Wrong Episode

It was Halloween. So, the teacher left them a video. An episode of The Twilight Zone.

(It was "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". Here's the link. Unfortunately, it's mirror flipped, so all the words are opposite.)

Then, because students will ignore videos, they had a "quiz" after. It wasn't so much a quiz as just something to verify that they hadn't been on their phones. Ms. S said that they could work together on it.

Of course, some of them were on their phones. They didn't even attempt the "quiz". In fact, they were surprised by it when I passed it out. I don't know why. I announced it as I intro'ed the video.

Ah well.

Sixth period. They were awful. A group of boys was just loud. And obnoxious.

The loudest and most obnoxious of the group then complained that he had missed some of the first ten minutes (because he had been talking and such). He pulled out his phone, searched his Netflix, and found that the series was available.

Um, it was being projected on a big screen at the front of the room. But somehow, this wasn't the quality that he liked. He'd rather watch it on his phone.

As long as he watched it...

The episode was over. I passed out the questions (which were multiple choice and obvious). The boy was still watching on his phone. I looked over his shoulder.

I'm sure you won't be shocked if I tell you he wasn't watching "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". However, he was watching The Twilight Zone. Yes, the black & white original series.

He was watching the "Living Doll" episode. You know, talking Tina.

I mean, great selection. I applaud the choice. But later. You know, after he'd completed the questions for the episode that was assigned...

Sigh. Let's just say that Ms. S wasn't shocked when that boy's name came up.

Redid the Witch Hat Headband

A couple weeks back, I showed off my little witch hat headband...

And you agreed that it was a little small. So, this past week I remade it with a larger hat...

I think that came out rather nice. (It's too late to make another before Halloween, so this'll have to do for this year.)

I even got my new camera to cooperate and take some headband-only photos. (I have to do selfies with my phone. If I had gotten the headband done a day earlier, I could have found someone to take pictures of me.)

The one above is the smaller size. The larger size is below...

If I'd been thinking ahead, I would have gotten these done early enough to offer them for sale. Sigh. Maybe next year. Someone, remind me, OK?

But there is plenty of time to remind you of the original iteration of this idea. From last year...

I will make these for sale if anyone is interested. Just let me know.

If there are any knitters out there, you can make your own. You can find the "ingredients" here:

• Headband instructions
• Santa hat pattern
• Assembly instructions
• Small witch hat pattern
• Larger witch hat pattern

If you happen to make one, I'd love to see it. Just tag me on Instagram, Twitter, or Ravelry. I'm @ZiziRho.

Broken Skulls

As it is October, the assignment for the ceramics classes was to make Calaveras (sugar skulls). They had two weeks.

(They were to make two pinch bowls, score & slip them together creating a hollow sphere, and then sculpt that into a Calavera. I get lesson plans like this all the time--plans that make little to no sense to me. I just read it to them and hope they get it.)

As they turned in their skulls on Friday (leaving them out on a shelf), the students in following periods would stop to gawk. A couple of them tried to touch. I got snippy about those that wanted to touch other students' skulls. I could just see someone accidentally breaking another student's two weeks worth of work.

We got through the entire Friday with all the skulls intact.

Then my assignment got extended one more day. (It's a long story about doctor's notes and school bureaucracy.)

Monday's assignment had them writing about their skulls. They were to describe them using the elements and principles.

Well, of course they'd need to have their skulls in front of them for that. And they'd be careful with their own work, right?

Fifth period. A boy raised his hand. He waved me over. He needed to show me something.

Half his skull was rubble. There were several chunks of what had been the face sitting in the hollow of what had been the back of the head.

What had happened? He wasn't entirely sure. All I could think about was how much work he had put into that thing.

I asked him what Mr. P would have him do in this situation. He said he'd get to remake it. Well, okay then...

At least that was only the second skull that got broken that day. (The first one wasn't a big loss. I attempted to get the boy to put more effort into his skull. He didn't see my point.) And somehow we made it through the rest of the day without another mishap.

Reruns

I was just perusing some older pictures from the blog (while looking for a picture for a future post), and I stumbled across a couple Halloween-y ones. Like this jack-o-lantern... 

(Which I had at the craft boutique last week.)

And, of course, the spider...

As I don't have anything new for this week, I figured these would work for reruns. I'm sure I'll have a moment of finishing everything at some point. It's just not happening this week.

Although, there is one newbie...

(...that I've been "finishing up" for two weeks. No, it does not take two weeks to make one of these, unless one isn't doing much by the way of yarn work.)

Updating Pictures, Part 5

Another Monday. More pictures.

I have now got a backlog of pictures to sort through. This is a good thing. Now I just have to sit myself down and make the time...

This week I retook the pictures of my Halloween projects from a couple years ago. I made small amigurumi pumpkins, and then with puffy paint I made one a jack-o-lantern...

And then, of course, is the spider...

One of these years I'll get a whole bunch of critters made for Halloween. But when I should be working on them (August), I tend to be distracted by other things. Ah well.

Finally, I got working on the poncho that I talked about a few weeks back. The first panel is finally done. (And now that I went back to look at the original, I see a big mistake I made. Oops.)

This has taken me way too long to do. Not that it's all that hard. I just haven't been doing much crocheting (or knitting) lately. My usual yarn time keeps getting usurped by my desire to go to sleep early. I figure time will open up in the not too distant future. I hope.

(Pattern for the poncho is the link to the pin above. Here's the link to the pattern for the spider. And here's the link to the pattern for the amigurumi pumpkin.)

The Ugly

Some days I should really just turn off my phone.

Last Friday. The day before Halloween. Many of the kiddos were in costume.

It was a minimum day (end of the quarter). So, not only were they wound up due to Halloween, but they were also anticipating and early release from school.

Oh, and I must mention that we had a fire drill.

So, the day was bad enough. Add in that I had a 7th grade class. That has had a succession of subs since the beginning of the year. (The teacher's out on maternity leave.)

This is the recipe for chaos.

Yeah, it was bad. By the end of the day I had no voice left. I'll leave it at that.

Have a pleasant weekend.

The Last Spider Post (This Year)

I think I'm all spidered out.

Since the painted-on glow-in-the-dark eyes didn't work, I finally broke down and bought googly eyes. And glued them over the paint job...

And now I think he looks like Toothless. But that's better than the creepy look he had before.

Per your suggestions, I tried using pipe cleaners for the legs for the twins. I rather like the way those turned out. Alas, I didn't have a chance to get pictures before I delivered them (I was down with a cold). However, when I gave the twins their spiders, the other two nephews requested spiders of their own.

The eldest nephew (HapkidoKid) asked that his be brown...

And the middle nephew (Rambo) requested purple but with pipe cleaner legs. Unfortunately, they only make pipe cleaners in one shade of purple which doesn't match the shade of purple I had in yarn...

Ah well. Just to get an idea of what the twins' spiders looked like, I did a little photo manipulation...

It's a bit fuzzy, but otherwise gives you a good idea of how those turned out. I think I might like the pipe cleaner version better. (Although, getting the pipe cleaners onto the body is just as difficult as getting the I-cord legs on.)

And now I'm done. Unless the nephews want eyes on theirs. (I've asked but gotten no answer.) I suppose now I should start thinking about Christmas projects. But it's been way too hot to think about Christmas.

Spider in Purple

No decision on the eye front. Thanks for all your suggestions. I like the rhinestone bead idea. Now I just have to figure out where to acquire some rhinestone beads.

(Since some of you have expressed a like of googly eyes, I may have to try that as well. There's no reason why I can't make several all with different types of eyes.)

This past week I made a spider in purple...

It was a request. I like how it turned out.

I delivered the spider to its recipient. (Yes, I am taking orders for these things.) That's when my 2-year-old twin nephews saw it.

When does one teach a 2-year-old the word "spider"? Because they knew what it was. And what to call it. And they wanted to get their hands on it.

Which would have been fine, except the legs have wires in them. To keep them positioned. And I'm not too sure that they would be safe for 2-year-olds.

For the next hour, I kept hearing the word "spider" followed by crying. *facepalm*

So, now I have two more to make. (Can't just bring the twins just one.) And no idea how to deal with the legs.

Well, at least the eye question is settled for them. No eyes. (I've seen what they've done with other things I've made for them. The eyes would be pulled off in no time.)

Spider Eyes

A couple weeks ago I showed off the spider I had crocheted...

...and roughly half of you said he needed eyes while the other half said to leave as is. So, I've been contemplating how I could do eyes. I went to the craft store and found googly eyes, but I didn't think they'd work. Someone suggested painting eyes on...

This is step one. The paint is glow in the dark, which I thought would give it the right sort of look, but I don't think I like how this turned out. Perhaps I need to put some black over it, which will sort of look eye-y against the black body of the spider.

I did a little research, and most spider critters that are made for Halloween decor tend not to have visible eyes.

So, I'm still not sure what I'm going to do. In the meantime, I'm still cranking out the critters...

And the paint thing gave me an idea about the jack-o-lantern...

Better. I need to work on getting the paint smoother (and figure out if I really want to use puffy paint for it).

What do you think? Eyes on the spiders? Any ideas for how to get eyes on the spiders? I really could use all of your input on this one.

The Spider

The Halloween knitting crocheting continues. 

I went online in search of something seasonal to work on, and I stumbled across this pattern for an amigurumi spider in a web. I kind of like how it turned out...  

It still needs eyes. Or does it? 

The body worked up easily enough. And the legs, done in I-cords (although, I actually crocheted them, too), went easily enough. My troubles came later. 

The instructions have you insert wires into the legs and then attach those legs to the body. But my legs were flopping around like crazy. 

Turns out, the wires need to be attached to the legs somehow. If I hadn't wound in my ends before inserting the wire, I could have saved myself a world of grief by using those ends to tie down the wires. 

Then, the legs need to be really attached to the body. Not just tacked down. Once I went back and sewed those legs all the way across the bottom, the legs bent and molded just the way I'd hoped they would. 

So, mistakes made, but that means those mistakes won't be made on a second critter. Wish me luck.

Not Cute Creepy

Busy week ahead. I'm over at Unicorn Bell all week, talking about writing groups. Feel free to drop on by and tell us of your experiences.

I've been kind of between projects. I'm not sure what to work on, so I went in search of some Halloween patterns. I pulled out the pumpkin pattern as these got lost in the move...

And I went to try again the jack-o-lantern version...

Which still looks creepy. And not in a good-creepy way.

I guess I have to bite the bullet and figure out how to...gulp...embroider some eyes and mouth holes. Does anyone have any embroidery experience? Any ideas? Help...

My Halloween "Costume"

What are you dressing up as for Halloween? Are you dressing up?

The last time I voluntarily dressed up was in the 8th grade. I was an alien. I took a trash bag, turned it upside down, cut out arm holes and a head hole. Underneath I wore a leotard and tights. With makeup, I think I pulled off the look I was going for.

It was incredibly hot, though. Black trash bags don't breathe, and Southern California Halloweens can end up being warm days. But that's not why I stopped dressing up.

All the other kids laughed at me.

Now I know they were just jealous of my creativity. (At least, that's the story I tell myself. I'm going to keep telling myself that story.) But I've never since gone to the trouble of creating a costume again. (Except for the one year it was required, but as that was under duress, I don't count it.)

I still love Halloween, though. And every year, I "dress up". In a science fiction/fantasy sort of way.

Last year I was an alien anthropologist sent to Earth to study humans. Since I had to blend in, I of course looked like everyone else. This year I'm a time traveller from the future who's come back in time just for a visit. (Castle came up with the perfect moniker for this: temporal anthropologist. I'm stealing it.)

And this brings me to my question for this Thursday (you didn't think I forgot it was Thursday, did you?). Not so much a "what if" as a question to ponder.

If you weren't going to dress up for Halloween but wanted to say you were dressed up, what would you say you were dressed as? 

(Okay, I'm just asking to get ideas for what to call my non-costume next year. I'm sure there are plenty.)

Halloween Is Coming

I'm ignoring the fact that today is Labor Day. But as now it's September, I can start thinking about Halloween.

Too early? You haven't been in any craft stores then. The craft stores have their Christmas stuff up. (I started my Christmas knitting in January.)

I don't usually decorate. But since I got on Pinterest, I've seen all sorts of interesting ideas that I might just have to try...

Puff painted pumpkins.

Spiderman jack-o-lantern.

Milk carton ghosts.

Spooky eyes in the bushes.

And I could even crochet a witch's hat and/or a mask.

Got any Halloween plans yet?

Poe-try for Halloween

Today I was back at the continuation high school. In honor of Halloween, they were reading Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven".

But instead of reading it aloud or listening to it on CD, we watched The Simpsons' version. Remember it? (I wish I knew how to embed videos. That's the next Internet trick I plan to learn.)

The classes went very well. They usually ignore videos. This time I had rapt attention. I guess a cartoon is all it takes.