School Halloween Party

I planned a pretty awesome Halloween party for my kids. We made monster hands and ghost puppets. The biggest hit was reverse trick or treating. All the kids sat in a circle and each grown up had a bag of candy. We would walk up to kids sitting quietly and they would say trick or treat and we'd give them candy. It sounds stupid I know, but I've never seen them sit so quietly and every kid I asked afterwards said that was their favorite part of the party!

The first part of the party were stations. There were 4 leaders (thats what the grown ups are called) so I had 3 stations set up, and I walked around to each one to make sure they were going ok. There was a craft station, a candy tossing station, and a play outside and burn off your candy energy staion.

When I went to check on the play outside station there was a kid who had been yelling at other kids and refused to go inside when the leader asked him to. I went to go talk to him and he started walking away from me. I did the whole you have 3 seconds to get back and then counting down, and he just took off to the parking lot! He started dodging me around cars and yelling he wasn't coming in, and then he took off towards the street!!! So I'm chasing him dressed like a fairy good witch (see picture above) and this other teacher sees whats going on and runs out of the building to help, and she's dressed like an oompa loompa.

So we look ridiculous and we're chasing this little boy and finally I'm able to grab him right when he got to sidewalk next to the street. We had to literally carry/drag him inside because by this time he was in hysterics and refused to walk! I called his mom who was in the middle of work and had her pick him up immediately. I felt really bad for the mom, but his kid had made me leave my 50 other kids and put himself in tons of danger!

Oh man it was nuts and the whole time I had to run away and deal with it, my other leaders didn't think of switching stations even though I wrote it on my giant white board, so all the other kids are insanely bored because they're still at the same station. Good thing we had reverse trick or treating, or the party would have been a disaster!

So I have no idea what the kid's deal was, and his mom didn't explain his behavior at all, it was very bizarre. The next day when he was working with a tutor on his homework, he started to do the same thing. He started walking out the door and the tutor just kind of watched and didn't tell me or anything. Luckily I noticed and zipped over there. I asked him to come inside, he was just kind of milling around right outside the door, and he said no way "not until I get shot in the head first"!!!!!!! so clearly this kid has HUGE issues, so I decided a new approach and instead of getting pissed off and telling him to come in now, I just went outside and sat on the steps and started talking to him about his day. He told me why he was upset and that he didn't understand his homework and he didn't like his tutor and everything, so he asked me to help with his homework, and I said of course! And by the end of the day we were best pals no joke! So this kid responds awesomely to positivity and I was excited we were on the same page. But when I told his mom the whole story from the getting shot to the we got through all his homework and are best friends, she just focused on the negative, and I was so bummed!

He didn't come to the program the next day, and now I"m afraid she pulled him out to avoid any more trouble. I hope he comes back because I feel like we were making progress, but who knows.

Well, I'd better get cleaning, my goal is to have all our winter stuff out and all our summer stuff and give away stuff put away/ready by the end of the day.