A Spooky Time in Deauville

             As we reach the end of October, an excitement rises in the air in the Deauville school system. In October there is the first vacation of the year: All Saint's Day Holiday Break. However, the break is not the cause of all of the excitement. Rather, the cause is a tradition that the children inherently link to our presence in Deauville as Americans. In Deauville, October with the Americans means time to celebrate Halloween.
            Right before the beginning of vacation the town hosts an after school Halloween event where all the kids and school employees dress up in costume, eat candy, and explore a haunted house. It's a very exciting night where everyone was able to have a lot of fun to get together and to celebrate after all the hard work we have all put in since the beginning of the school year.

 Barton carving pumpkins for the events

            Halloween in Deauville ends with this evening event, but it is far from the beginning. During the entire month of October Halloween is the subject in English class. At first glance, you might wonder how Halloween vocabulary could be useful enough to spend an entire month on; to my surprise there was little challenge finding useful applications.             

            Halloween is full of classroom ideas: you can count candy in English, learn the colors and names of all the costumes, learn simple emotions to express how costumes make you feel for example. In my classes, I was able to teach numbers using songs I found on youtube that count monsters with my youngest groups (Five Little Monsters ) and with my older group we learned all the different costumes and monsters you can dress up as. With the older kids you are able to play many games with only the use of flashcards that the children love. The classic game that we did with halloween vocabulary is to show them a set of flashcards, then put all of the images on the board, ask them to close their hides and then you remove one or two images and ask the kids "What's Missing?". Normally when I play this game I divide the class into two teams and it's almost surprising how often they ask if we can play that game again with our new content. 

 My personal masterpieces 

           As Halloween comes to an end, we are shifting gears to studying Thanksgiving and Christmas. Until then, during the time off Barton will be off to Scotland and London for the break, while I head down to Aix-en-Provence and then Tenerife to find my way to the sun. It's funny how fast Deauville began to feel like home, and how quickly I look forward for my upcoming months here. Until next time!

- Chase 

Your local neighborhood superhero