You can do a search on this site for Halloween threads and you will get different answers why people choose to skip it or celebrate it. This is a discussion that comes around every year and will probably come around again.
akidsheart.com has lots of cool holiday stuff and seasonals, bible stuff , Im there getting ready for a class! ( coffe break time!)
When I teach my children about seasons .....that is what I teach them. Fall/Autumn does not equal Halloween; Spring does not equal Easter and Winter does not equal Christmas. When I teach my children about Holidays that is when those mentioned and others are discussed. Many people have different beliefs and to question or challange them seems a bit rude. I'm sure this was not your intention but that is how it came across.
She didn't come across rude to me. I think she was just asking an honest question. To be honest with you all I had never in my life met anyone who did not celebrate Halloween until I came to this board. Maybe she is like me and was curious.
It wasn't the questions.....but rather the statement after the questions. I do celebrate Halloween by the way but have always known people who haven't, even way back when I was a kid, so I guess thats why I don't question someone who doesn't. I can however, understand what you are saying about being curious about someone who choses not to.
That's what's so cool about homeschooling! You get to bring up your children the way YOU want to! I actually had a problem with my DD equating holidays with seasons. We spent hours on how seasons have to do with the weather, not a holiday. Christmas and Easter are not seasons, they are holidays. So I think it's a good idea to teach the seasons separate from the holidays.
everyone feels differently I personally have a lot of christian friends who do celebrate Halloween but the last two years we have chosen to not celebrate this holiday. I didnt realize that people who worship satan celebrate this night like we do christmas. Sometimes i forget that there is actually evil people out there who do practice witchcraft etc. i would rather forget, but i know its important not to forget. i just decided we would glorify God in all that we do and didnt feel trick or treatn would be glorifying, but last 2 years we did hand out tracks in our candy bowl. this year we moved to country so we wont even have to address it. yeah! its hard for my kids to understand why we dont celebrate this, but their other friends whose families are christians do. i just told them that God lays different things on different peoples heart and this was something i felt we needed to do, but that didnt mean their friends were bad or that their families were not christian. they were just not in the same place spiritually as we are. they seem to understand for their age level at least.
When I mention the seasons my kids automatically say the holidays that goes with them. Umm that is not what I am teaching. Grr there's more to it than the holidays. While we still do stuff for the holidays I dont go all out like I use to.
We cover pumpkins and Scarecrows during the month of late October. We are starting our fall theme next week for two weeks and then covering pumpkins and scarecrows. I try my best to find ideas without Halloween in them. We observe the season of Fall but not Halloween with ghosts, goblins, witches. So far this is what I have been using last year (I try to add more each year) Teaching Heart's Fall theme http://www.teachingheart.net/afallunit.html Little Giraffe's Fall theme http://www.littlegiraffes.com/fall.html Pumpkin Sequencing Book: how a pumpkin grows (PDF) http://www.kizclub.com/Topics/food/pumpkin.pdf Harvest/pumpkin poems and songs Here is a bumper crop of autumn songs and poems (without the Halloween stuff) http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/202.html Autumn Leaves - Why do leaves change color in Fall? This explanation of why leaves change color includes classroom projects. http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/leaves.html ART and Crafts Leaf Craft Have children bring in leaves from a walk and create works of art by making rubbings. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/Leafcraft.shtml Multi-Color Leaf Prints Using Styrofoam® plates, students can create multicolored leaf art. http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/elem/elem44.html Tissue Leaf Rubbings Make a beautiful picture with tissue paper leaf rubbings. http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/pages/444.shtml Autumn/Fall Art You can make beautiful crafts using Autumn leaves. http://www.squiglysplayhouse.com/ArtsAndCrafts/Crafts/LeafArt.html Fall Wreath Help your students construct a great fall decoration http://www.theteacherscorner.net/seasonal/fall/wreath.htm Fall Wreath Help your students construct a great fall decoration I have more stuff in my folders, I need to look for so I can cover our themes.
Thanks Sandra! That's a HUGE help! All the other sites were great too ladies! I've printed about 30 pages and I'm still searching because we are doing all our subjects with a fall theme! I've even found some fall themed math sheets!
The boys are loving it too...I even found a neat little math sheet where they have to do the problems and then color by number using the answers to the math problem
how cool! Thats how our Horizon has things sometimes too, color by the number of correct order etc, anyway, I wish my kids were younger when things were more fun to do! lol ITs getting to be hard work latey, studying about stuff in HS and jr High, sigh, But I am hanging on to the fun stuff for ds11!
