Wednesday, October 29, 2014

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Headless Horseman is such a fantastic visual - scary, beautiful, and compelling - I adore it.

This terrifying (and evidently amusing) tale has captured the imaginations of our first grade students.

Ever since we read it to them last week they have been acting it out on the playground, building the drowsy, dreamy landscape of Sleepy Hollow in the block area and asking over and over to borrow my only copy of the book (we read the Step Into Reading version).  The names Ichabod Crane, Katrina Van Tassel and Brom Bones are uttered on a daily basis.

So, when it came time to think of a pumpkin decorating idea for our school's annual pumpkin contest it came as no surprise that the children wanted a Headless Horseman pumpkin.  Hmmm...what would that look like?  After some experimentation it was decided that we would keep the pumpkin itself rather simple (painted midnight blue to resemble Ichabod's midnight encounter at the church bridge and an image of the Headless Horseman) but create a book to accompany our pumpkin.

The book is below.  The drawings and text are fully credited to our first grade class.  It is interesting to see which bits really stood out for them.









Happy Halloween!

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Upside Down

Things have been wonderfully "Upside Down" since my last post - school started again (my 19th year!) and I completed my dissertation (my defense will take place on November 3rd!).

I anticipate a rebirth of this blog after graduation but in the meanwhile I wanted to share some of my favorite Halloween books (see sidebar) and repost the video (Upside Down by Jack Johnson) that kicked off this blog back in 2007.

Who's to say
I can't do everything
Well I can try
And as I roll along I begin to find
Things aren't always just what they seem.

I'll share this love I find with everyone
We'll sing and dance to Mother Nature's songs
I don't want this feeling to go away.

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