The other thread just gave me an idea for this spin off and I am curious. For those of you who do celebrate Halloween do you incorporate it into your studies??? We do. Last year we learned the origin of the jack-o-lantern and made our own. We studied the ancient origins, modern traditions and how the holiday came to America. The most interesting thing though was reading the story of the Real Prince Dracula. Freaky! That happened to be of use too because it came up again this morning in our studies of the middle ages and Samantha knew exactly what they were talking about. I think we covered everything last year which means we don't really have anything to learn about this year. Oh well. Maybe we will just read stories of hauntings or something fun like that and watch movies.
I had planned on doing a seperate lesson just on Halloween. I am going to explain how the traditions of costumes came about as well as the jack-o-lantern. And of course we will carve pumpkins and decorate the house.....my kids are a bit young for any of the real scary stuff and I myself am a bit of a whimp when it comes to that. I think it would be fun to watch all those old "B" movies they used to show on Sat. mornings. You know the ones, "Attack of the Killer Brains", "The Return of the Swamp Monster" and ALL the old Dracula and Mummy movies. My sister's and I used to be glued to the television when those movies were on! Good times, good times..................
I "don't do" Halloween, but found it very difficult when I was in the public classroom. So I wanted to tell you about two things I did that kind of incorporataed Halloween, but was more "educational". First, we would always study the skeleton in October. That way, we had skeletons hanging from the ceiling, which was Halloween-ish, but the goal wasn't Halloween. Also, there's a tape out (hopefully it's now out on CD!) called "Fright Night: Music that goes bump in the night". It had a lot of great classical stuff on it: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Flight of the Valkyries, Night on Bald Mountain, La Danse Macabre, Hall of the Mountain King, etc. We would listen for PATTERNS in the music, etc. It's great stuff!
Nice to see I'm not the only one. Studying the traditions was a lot of fun for us. My kids don't like scary things at all. Studying Dracula was okay though. It just kind of grossed Sam out with all the talk of impaling people on stakes. Hey it is part of history right? I wish I could get my oldest to watch some of those old movies with me. Yes I agree....good times!
Oh yes I forgot we did the bones of the body last October too. Gee I guess I shouldn't have done everything last year. Nothing left for this year!
We do a big Halloween. We used to do our house as a haunted house (big time). The year before we moved we had ~1000 kids come through in 2 nights which netted us $2000 to give to the local fire department. We have skeletons that the kids work with and find bones They are real anatomical skeletons from an anatomical supply company. So the kids know how to put them together. So we do study some of the stuff - but honestly a lot of it is art work that the kids do.
We just did the handprint spiders with pumpkins on the bottom. Doing some pumpkin books (the 5 little pumpkins) & other Halloween stuff. I have some fun color by number pix like a witch, bat & something else I can't remember. We LOVE Halloween. We don't do the whole really scary part, but the fun part about doing things together as a family pumpkin patch, carving & trick or treating (only at fams houses)!!!
We do Halloween too. We incorporate little things here and there like printable coloring pages. We made our own Jack-o-lanterns from starfall. Today we're doing a haunted gingerbread house that we found for $8 at walmart last weekend. (There will be pics on my blog tomorrow). We will probably get some books on Halloween and see what else we can do throughout the month. Oh, that reminds me, one of our child craft books has origins of holidays and has a bit about Halloween, I need to get it out too. And of course we trick-or-treat.
Well Tiffany, we did alot of what you already did, but every year we make food to eat and drink too. like I take hot dogs, then I take that can biscuit dough you get at the store and cut it long thin piece like a rope and wrap it around the hot dogs so they look like mummys they are always a good snack. Then we make witch brew, got to have that. Dry ice is what I put in it to make the smoke. Another good and fun thing to do, it take plastic gloves like they use at the doctors, wal mart sells them and get that candy corn and fill the fingers full of it and then take a rubber band and orange or black ribbon and tie at end. You got a cute hand. Oh another one, take a tootise roll sucker, and a white tissue, wrap around sucker and put rubber band at end, then take a black marker make a face and you got cute gifts to hand out for the treaters.
We are going to be doing something special for Halloween. We are going to learn about the origins of Halloween, learn about pumpkins, bats, spiders, how some candy is made, do crafts, read stories etc. I think it will be lots of fun!
Anybody know any good sites that go into detail (on child level or easily converted to child level) on why we associate bats, spiders, trick-or-treating into Halloween? I heard somewhere once that the pumpkins were originally something else in Europe (but can't remember what now) so I'm hoping to find that. Thanks so much! Btw....the haunted house pics are on my blog if you're interested in seeing what they look like.
http://www.brownielocks.com/halloweenhistory.html You made me search And I was curious... but this page seems to have a lot. I skimmed so not quite sure. And I wish I could turn the dang music off!
Cool, thanks Dana, that looks like exactly what I was looking for! Yeah...that music is atrocious! Seems to hit that nerve that makes your entire body cringe, lol.
Autumn, the house looks GREAT! We make a gignerbread village each year at Christmas. We decorate one house we buy as a kit, and then each kid makes a smaller one out of graham crackers.
Halloween is my favorite holiday, so we always do something. We don't do trick-or-treating anymore. No one in our neighborhood does & I don't want to drive to another neighborhood to to trick-or-treat. So, instead we make Halloween themed food, play Halloween themed games & watch Halloween themed & scary movies. We actually celebrate pretty much the whole month of October. Last year, dd did a lapbook about Halloween. We researched the origins of the traditions, the common symbols of Halloween, etc. We made a haunted house out of cookie dough (& lots of icing & candy). We make a lot of our own decorations each year. Here's some good sites dealing with the history of Halloween and/or Halloween symbols: History Channel halloween is here symbols & traditions halloween BTW, I believe it was Turnips that were originally used for Jack-o-Lanterns. When the Irish immigrated here during the potato famine, they found that pumpkins were more common here than turnips. That's why they started using pumpkins.
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays too! It is just a lot of fun to dress up and solicit free candy from neighbors!! This year we will eat pizza, go trick or treating then come home to play some games like bobbing for apples and mummy wrap then we will watch scary movies and eat a bumch of junk food till the wee hours of the morning. Samantha really wants to have a party since it falls on a Friday this year. We would basically do the same things just with more people. Part of me wants to let her have a party because I really do like her friends, they are great kids with the exception of one that annoys me but I am not sure I want to deal with a slumber party.
I've been wanting to do a big Halloween party for the kids since we bought the house. The problem is, we just don't have the money for all the really great decorations I want. Next year, I'm hoping to buy stuff throughout the year, so by Halloween, we'll have tons of stuff & be able to decorate the whole main level. Then, I'm hoping to do a party every year for the kids, their friends, and my nieces & nephews. I love coming up with Halloween recipes & games. The kids still get to dress up & do fun stuff, so they don't miss trick-or-treating. I loved trick-or-treating when I was younger. But now they've put so many restrictions on it, that it just isn't as fun. Plus, so many people don't hand out candy anymore, so you actually have to drive around to find the houses that do. Since we're only allowed to trick-or-treat for 1 1/2 hrs, it's just not worth it. You spend half the time in the car, driving to different neighborhoods.
Oh go to the dollar store for decorations!! If we do a party that is where we will get our things. We would need a table cloth, paper plates and some decorations to hang around the living room and that is pretty much it. My house is already decorated. I'm not doing goody bags or anything like that. Then we'd just need to buy apples for bobbing and toilet paper for the mummy wrap game and movies to watch. Okay the more I type about this the more I am leaning toward letting her have a party. Sounds like fun! I will have to speak to the parents about movie ratings and what they will allow before I show anything. Maybe dh and I can kick back in our bedroom and watch the really scary stuff.
I'm a bit late decorating this year. I'll be starting today. I just had dh pull out the holiday decorations a few days ago. Ds has been running around playing with sticky eyeballs for the last few days. Most of the stuff last year was paper things the kids made, and they got destroyed. So, we're gonna have to start working on new decorations soon. This year, I'm hoping to get better materials, so they can make stuff that'll last longer. We've got a bunch of window markers, and I'm gonna have the kids decorate all the windows (yellow & red eyes, black cats, ghosts, etc.). I want to get some black material to cover the walls, to make it a bit darker (our house is very colorful), but maybe I'll just tack up some big black garbage bags. I just might do a party this year. Talking about it is really making me want to.
