Tiny Tots Tricks and Talk: Treat Talking Tots to Tricky Treats.

For this years Halloween celebration we gathered the teachers, students, parrents, and anyone else who saw up going by, in Chengdu's "National Defense Park." The park itself was something of a trip, old airplanes and missles lying about, but the real site was all the kiddies in costumes. Us foreign teachers had really bland, lame costumes while many of the Chinese English teachers,
the children, and parents got just as into the holiday as people back home do.













Costumes ranged in everything from Superman and Tigger to Harry Potter and Juliet. The teachers had a Wizard of Oz theme, though it seems doubtful that they'd seen the movie from the cowardly Tin-man and ruthless lion to the left.

For our celebration we had a short stage performance, really more of a speech and talent show. In which our hosts brought children from all the classes at the Golden Apple American International English School up to parade their costumes for the parents. We foreign teachers were dressed in various degrees of monster outfits and some of the little cherubs, like this little bumble bee, were rather cross with us for being scary.

All of these cute kids are from our "baby class" or Sun Class at the Kindergarten. They're roughly two years old.











This little devil (sometimes I mean that) is Shaun (of the dead), one of my Bosses' sons and one of the little "angels" I work with Monday through friday. Our class is called Moon class and covers the 3 year olds. In the other pictures, the three cute little girls are Lena, on the left, Rosie, in the back, and Maya, on the right. Lena is the quiet well behaved one, Rosie is the quiet misbehaved one, and Maya is the loud one who behaves as she sees fit because she's also the most clever of the three. The problem with the smart kids is that you can't rely on them to behave well, they get bored too easily. The little Strong Bad styled wrestler is Alex, he's another of the really clever students. On this particular day he had decided that I was Buzz Lightyear. His logic was simple: I like Buzz Lightyear and I like Scott therefore Scott is aloud to be Buzz Lightyear. Alex refered to his own costume as "Super Baby" and repeatedly did the Superman "up up and away" pose as he said so, unfortunatly he was careful not to do it with cameras around.

The Last set of Moon Class photos, for now, is William and Hugh. William (Tigger) is one of the bright problem students who teachers can never figure out if they like or not. He's always eager to give the answer in class, always able to demonstrate an activity for kids that don't get it, but simply can't handle not being the center of attention. The pouty Jack-O-Lantern is Hugh (who usually says his name is Huge if asked). Hugh is a new student who is picking up English very quickly (when I started he could understand anything, now he's reliably one of the better participants in class). He has the same behavior pattern that William does, but the excuse that he doesn't always understand when the teacher tells him what he is suppose to be doing.


Following the other three classes's costume pageants, the performance given was really moe of a speach. The "Lords of Oz;" being Dorthy, The good witch, the Lion, The scarecrow, and the Tin-Man; talked about presenting free gifts and candy to the children... at which point the monsters (foreign teachers in capes) entered to put the candy in boxes and tell the children that they had to go work (play) for their candy.

Can you imagine the audacity we had in that? Telling them to go burn off energy so they can have sugar... its like we want the kids to grow up thin or something.

To work for their candy, the children had to visit various game stations and play a game there, one station for each "Lord of OZ" and then come back and tell us monster teachers the "magic words" to open the boxes in which we had sealed their candy.

Some locations were spooky, some were up-beat, some completely ignored the Oz theme to go for something a little more reachable and fun for everyone.





Apart from student getting scared of the fake spiders and being late for nap time, everyone had a good time all around. When they had finished they came back and recited the magic words (with help in the form of visual aids), and got their treasured candy.









There were some photo opportunities worth sharing though, including me being asked to pull a trick on one of my co-teachers by "saving her from the lion" who managed to stay out of the photo all together. Pictures with the lion (myself in one and my Chinese English teacher Michelle in the other. And lastly the Principal team (Shaun's daddy and his college).