Halloween is rich in tradition and steeped in superstition; a genuinely sacred night for some, and a traditional night of warm family fun for many others. This is the one night a year when Scary Ghosts, Wicked Witches, Evil Spirits and all manner of Creepy Crawlies roam the Earth with impunity – so watch out, stay home, be safe! Should anyone (or anything!) knock on your door, be nice! Because we all know what happens to people who aren’t nice on Halloween, don’t we?
Dressing up, trick or treating, going to parties and having fun are just some of the things us mere mortals do to entertain themselves when evil is loose. For a great many others, Halloween also means making stuff: costumes, masks, lanterns and decoration, and yes, Popplets! We took a look at how Popplet people were busying themselves by getting into the spirit of Halloween, but be warned, what we found is not for the faint hearted.
Halloween Popplet Fun
What better way to get into the swing of all things Halloween than by creating Halloween Popplets. That’s what Mrs Anton does with her 1st Graders. From a shared folder of clipart on her iPad, students import Halloween images and add words to create fun visuals:
Students can print off their eerie pictures and decorate their desks and walls with them. Or they can make them into invites for Halloween parties. Higher grade students could be asked to tell scary stories using more complex images and sentences. Whatever happens though, students must never be without their Popplets until dawn, when the wickedness that has taunted man will be gone…or some such thing!
The Facts About Bats – the Bat Popplet!
Some creatures just get a bad rep! None more so than the bat; a sensitive, friendly sort of mammal – super cool because it can fly – now forever linked to the undead and all sorts of other malevolent goings on. Set the record straight by learning the truth about bats (or any other oppressed species) and making Bat Popplets like Mrs Clapp’s students did for their class project:
This is only one of the many great Bat Popplets to be found on the school’s webpage. The students researched different types of bats and the differences in their morphology, habitation and eating habits. As well as being visually attractive and highly informative, the tables are well and truly turned on the age old tale that bats are bad for us. The reality, according to Mrs Clapp’s class is that we are bad for bats! I sense a bat revenge in the near future, and we only have ourselves to blame, jealous of their powers of flight…
Creepy Crawly Mind Maps and Spellbound Students
Bats are not bad, but some other animals really are more than a little scary – and dangerous! Spiders, snakes, insects – basically anything that is cold blooded, crawls or slithers – are never far from the action when evil misdeeds are afoot. But, not unlike the long lamented bat lore, when the truth is known, it makes all of these rather creepy creatures seem a little more people-friendly. Malevolent they are not, but they can still be dangerous. 3rd Graders from Elkmont school researched Spider Facts on KidRex before working on their Popplets:
The 3rd Graders from Elkmont were so keen to complete their Popplets that they finished up before the teacher could check their work:
“I was so excited and surprised…several students had already been on Popplet and had already made their mind map!”
We aren’t suggesting Popplet has special powers or anything like that…but sometimes, the way students take to it, and their engagement, well, they do appear positively spellbound!
Halloween Hullabaloo – A Terrorific Reading List!
Scary stories are the core of any Halloween celebration. Be it dark legends, classic novels, or horror films, most of us have at one time chosen to willingly experience the terror of a well told, tale of horror. Without these accounts of wicked witches, headless horsemen, ghosts, zombies, vampires and general evil doers, Halloween would not be Halloween. So, if you’re looking for a book to read or work in class, then check out this amazing Halloween Book Popplet from Librarians Quest:
Each featured book comes with a picture and a brief, but cleverly enticing description, and the titles are loosely categorized by grade to help you better choose how to scare your students! If none of these books interest you, then there is absolutely no shortage of legendary scary stories both old and new that you could add to your own Popplet. You could create a Popplet of horror movies, connecting them to their original novels such as Frankenstein, Dracula, Twilight…Popplet is also a great tool for literary analysis, presenting facts and storylines and completing character studies. Check out Popplet In the Reading Class for more ideas.
Create Creepy Halloween Photos
Do you want to create impressive scary Halloween photos on the iPad? Well by combining the special affects of Photo Booth and Popplet Lite you can. Technology Instructional Specialist, Lauralie Powers, explains exactly how to do it in her Halloween Popplets video:
Students could create their own images just for fun, voting on whose is the scariest, or like in the video, Popplet’s text and drawing features could be employed to teach other language points Here’s the image that Laurie created:
Yep, no sleep for us tonight! Thanks Laurie!
Have you made or are you going to make Popplets for Halloween? If you are, and they are not too terrifying, we’d really love if you could share your ideas with us and our community on Twitter and on our Facebook page.