Halloween
Special Needs Halloween ActivitiesBY EMILY HARVEY ON NOVEMBER 15, 2013
“The night of October 31 when children dress up as ghosts, witches, monsters, etc., and go to houses to ask for candy” is the definition of Halloween by Webster’s dictionary. This Halloween the special needs kids at Rose fit this description as they went from class to class trick-or-treating for candy. Students were allowed to knock on doors with orange pumpkins hanging on them.
Rose students were eager to help their fellow classmates participate in things they may not get the opportunity to do at home. This year SGA set up trick-or-treating and a Halloween party filled with fun, games and candy for the special needs classes. Senior Mallory Riggs has worked with the special needs kids her entire time at Rose and loves that other students are helping to make their Halloween special. “I have third period peer helping and I normally go all of SMART Block so I stay from 11:20 until 2; I’ve had it all through high school,” Riggs said. “A lot of these kids don’t get to have this on Halloween so this at school just makes them really happy; the kids at school get to help out too so it’s not just all the special needs kids but it’s like kids from Rose.” Halloween stories during first, trick-or-treating during second, anticipation of the Halloween party during third and finally the perfect end to a day filled with costumes and candy was the Halloween party put on by students at Rose. The exceptional students, excited and ready to go, had a full Halloween day. “The kids have been looking forward to this for weeks and they all were excited to wear their costumes and today we just did a lot of fun holiday stuff,” special education teacher Stephanie Campbell said. “We did a reading about Halloween and then they got all their costumes situated, we went trick-or-treating and then they looked forward to the party for the rest of the day.” This was the first year students took over and put together all the Halloween festivities for the special needs kids. Last year they got to trick-or-treat but it was set up by the special education teachers. “We did do the trick-or-treating but we set it up ourselves so this is the first year that it’s been set up by students; it was all their idea, we started working with SGA and then recently project unify and the students have been just coming in and asking a million ways that they can come and help,” Campbell said. “It’s been awesome; we’ve had buddies for parties, we’ve had stuff for special Olympics and there’s more stuff planned for the rest of the year.” Junior Marisa and senior Robert had a great time trick-or-treating at the party. They dressed up as a cheerleader and a football player. Their favorite places to trick-or-treat were in music teacher Karen Meetze’s room and front office receptionist Wendy Little’s office. Some of their favorite games at the party were: “The ring toss game, the duck game, the pool game and the stack up game,” Marisa said. Sophomore Maddie Myers contributed not only to trick-or-treating but also helped out by manning a game during the party. “I gave out candy, I was in Mrs. Hayne’s class; we also gave out stickers and cups,” Myers said. “I just signed up for the party, I thought it would be nice to help; meeting all the kids [was] really cool.” Campbell was excited with how the trick-or-treating and the party went; she was also grateful for how well Rose students worked with her kids. “It’s awesome, the kids are obviously in heaven right now, all sugared up,” Campbell said. “It’s just nice to have all the help so us teachers can just sit back and watch the kids have fun and not worry about anything going wrong because the students are just so great with the kids.” Because the Halloween activities were put on by students instead of the teachers themselves they were not quite sure what to expect but the students went above and beyond and did a great job. “My favorite part was probably just seeing how many people participated and the kids got so much more than we expected,” Campbell said. “The kids were just running around smiles on their faces, I just like seeing them happy.” HTML Comment Box is loading comments...
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