Mummy.

Oh, Halloween week in kindergarten. The excitement of the impending tricks and treats is palpable. We’ve been hearing a lot, I mean a LOT, about costume ideas, costume purchases, and costume quandaries. An avid lover of all things candy, I also adore Halloween. If we can harness the enthusiasm and channel it into some literacy and math activities, more power to us.

Today we read a shared poem about Halloween. In the poem, a different scary Halloween creature (spiders, pumpkins, monsters, etc.) goes flying through the air. Each time we read the poem, the creature changes and a different sprout comes up to ‘fly’ the critter in the air.

To enable the creature to ‘fly,’ Mrs. D. has a tiny kindergarten sized finger puppet for each character. I know, when she first told me about this lesson, I thought, ‘finger puppets’? They didn’t seem too thrilling to me, but wouldn’t you know it (Mrs. D. always knows…) to come up in front of the class, put a tiny plastic finger puppet on and wave it around to make it ‘fly’… you would think these kids had won the lottery.

Well as Mrs. D. pulled out the pumpkin, she commented, ‘Oh, it’s a bloody pumpkin.”

Indeed, the little tiny pumpkin man had some fake blood on him… nothing too gory or scary, but bloody just the same.

After the bloody pumpkin, she pulled out a little mummy. Oh yes, it was indeed a bloody mummy. When she held it up, I asked, “Oh, a bloody mummy?”

Without missing a beat, Audra fired out, “Well, it is Halloween.”

For the record, a former student had simply attacked the mummy with a red marker... hence the 'blood'.

Oh yes, it is almost Halloween. Bring on the bloody mummies!