Montessori de Terra Linda's Halloween Festival: Creativity and Collaboration in Action

October 15, 2024

Marin Mommies presents a sponsored article from Montessori de Terra Linda.

Like every October at Montessori de Terra Linda (MdTL), we are counting the days until our Halloween Festival on October 26. This much-loved community event, focused on fostering a love of reading, has it all — clever costumes, spooky decorations, pumpkin patch, live music, gourmet bake sale, chili-making and pie-baking contests, game booths for kids and a huge display of book prizes. An MdTL tradition since the 1970s, the Halloween Festival originated from the desire to provide young students from our toddler and primary classrooms (ages 2–6) a safe and age-appropriate Halloween celebration with games and activities. At the heart of the festival are the ingenious book-themed game booths designed, engineered, and managed by our elementary students (ages 6–12).

Our Montessori elementary classrooms follow a multi-disciplinary approach where ingenuity and collaboration are at the core of the curriculum. For the Halloween Festival, our students break into teams and are tasked with developing game booths inspired by popular children’s books. The games are different each year: from The Very Hungry Caterpillar obstacle course to Charlotte’s Web bean bag toss to the One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish fishing boat. Our youngest students relish in playing the games and as they grow into elementary students, they take on the role of game designers.

Let’s go behind the scenes to see how these games come to life! Students from our multi-age elementary classrooms:

Select their book — keeping the younger students’ interests in mind
Dream up ideas for their game booths — practice collaboration, flexibility, and compromise — all ideas are welcome, but the group must come to consensus on one theme
Figure out how the game booth will operate, identify the objective of the game, and define the rules
Research and development — game designers must ensure the games are suitable for two to 12 year-old festival-goers, as well as our very enthusiastic teenage alumni who come back for the Halloween Festival every year
Construction phase — creativity and resourcefulness to create an attractive sign for their booth, as well as source and assemble the various materials needed for each part of their game. Artistic expression and math skills are on full display in this phase!
Game QA testing and re-design — ensure everything runs smoothly for the festival crowds
Big day — students create a schedule to run their game booth in partners, allowing each student to have a work shift, as well as time to play and enjoy the other activities

Our elementary students take ownership of this large, collaborative, and creative endeavor, demonstrating a great deal of pride in their booths, and seriousness about how they will be run. On the day of the festival, we see our older students encouraging game-players of all ages, sharing strategies, and cheering them on to win as many tickets as possible, always treating them with kindness. After the game booths close, children of all ages trade their tickets in for gently-used book prizes.

The MdTL Parent Association works their magic behind the scenes, organizing countless volunteers to ensure the pumpkin patch, bake sale and chili and pie contests run smoothly. Our annual MdTL Halloween Festival is a not-to-be-missed event for our community, and the layers of learning and intrinsic rewards for our students are priceless.