Happy Halloween!

As the leaves turn brown and fall to the ground and the days get shorter in Yokohama, we know what is coming: Halloween!
Whilst the season can be scary, it’s been a lot of fun for the CGK friends as they made a lot of Halloween-themed arts and crafts at CGK Preschool.

The Jungle friends (3-year-olds) made their own original monster faces. First, they had to paint paper plates with a variety of colours. Since they had learnt their colours earlier in the year it was the first time for the children to experiment with mixing colours. What would happen if you mixed pink with green? Next, they used different shapes to compose their monster’s face. At this age, their creativity is based on what they know. In this case, it’s their own faces. So it was a great opportunity for them to mix it up with faces that had more facial features than their own. Two mouths? Sure! Five eyes? Why not ten?! There was no fixed design for a monster face so it was great for the children to explore and enjoy being creative without having to worry about what is “correct”.

With the Friday before Halloween scheduled for an all-day Halloween party, the Mountain (4-year-olds) and Sky friends (5-year-olds) got right into it decorating their trick-or-treat bags. The Mountain friends decorated their Halloween bags by first drawing their own Halloween designs. Once that was done, they transferred their designs onto the bags by making mosaics of their designs. This creative process was important as the children were tasked to follow their own designs; they couldn’t change their designs whilst making the mosaic. So when drawing their Halloween designs they had to spend more time on their ideas and to make sure that they were satisfied with what they have created.

The Sky friends took their arts and crafts skills to a whole new level by incorporating sewing into their trick-or-treat bags design. Using yarn the Sky friends had to sew their spooky designs on instead of drawing or painting them. With their well-developed fine-motor skills, this was a new challenge that was appropriate for their level. Some chose to use the sewing as the basis of their designs. Others used it to accentuate their creations. We hope everyone enjoyed making their Halloween craft as much as they will enjoy Halloween and all its fun and scary things. Boo!