This summer, I picked up a couple of Halloween decorations at a yard sale. I've never decorated my classroom for Halloween before, but there's no reason I can't start now.
Haunted House tape around the door. My coworker asked me what was up with the caution tape. Is your classroom a crime scene? Ummmm....it very clearly says "Haunted House."
Pumpkin lights on my desk.
Were my kiddos impressed with all the hard work I put into decorating? (Because, you know, it's so hard to plug in a string of lights and ask your student aide to wrap tape around the door...) No. When they saw the decorations, they wanted to know where the spiders, spider webs, and bats were. #Sigh
Another student noted that my haunted house was missing a witch. Then, they corrected themselves and said that they had forgotten that there already was a witch in the room...
The Oilpatch Jamboree festival was earlier this month. I worked the Friends of the Library table where we sold cotton candy and bookmarks that were decorated by the 3rd and 4th graders at our elementary school. The Oilpatch Jamboree is a celebration of all things Oilpatch. We boast that we have the "most unique parade in the oilpatch." I'm not sure if that's verifiable, but I can say that it's the only parade I've ever seen that features oil field equipment as parade entries. After a 5k run, the parade, and pageant, the town flocks to a park full of vendors for food, fun, and music.
Here are the bookmarks we sold. The kids did a fantastic job of decorating them!
Somehow, I became the person in charge of making the cotton candy. Have I ever made cotton candy before in my life? That's a definite no. I've eaten cotton candy, but I'm not sure that counts.
Luckily, our elementary school principal showed us how to make a batch before leaving my landlady and me on our own.
I did buy myself a new fall decoration while at Oilpatch. A chevron, burlap pumpkin. When I went to hang it up in my classroom, I could only find one place that it would fit. This is actually the place on my classroom wall where I'm going to hang my college diploma when I finally get around to framing it. (I did buy a frame for my diploma at the end of this summer. I'm making progress. It may be slow progress, but it is progress.)
After hanging my pumpkin, I stepped back to admire my work. That's when I realized that I had just transformed my pumpkin wall hanging into "pumpkin pi." I think it's fitting. I shared my excitement over this accidental mathematical statement with my students. Most of them rolled their eyes at me. Oh well. It makes me smile...
Other notable things from Oilpatch:
There was a Big Foot sighting. There were also little kids screaming and crying their heads off for fear of Big Foot.
And, I got what every vegetarian needs: this notepad.
All in all, it was a great first Oilpatch experience for me. The past two years, I've skipped Oilpatch because I felt like everybody in this town knows everybody and I know nobody. It's taken some time, but I've finally started making friends and connections in this town.