Halloween doesn’t have to be spooky, scary, over-dressed, overdone, or stressed! It can simply…BE! You can participate, or not. You can dress up, or not. You can engage in regular home school that day, or you could opt to make it a day (or week) of fun, creative, tasty, stress-free activities, i.e., simply the ultimate “Happy Homeschool Halloween!” We prefer to do the latter! :) We experienced our first (in a long time) traditional, classic trick-or-treat outing last year, which was our son’s first! Our newest friends were kind enough to “induct us” into their neighborhood’s family tradition which included full-costume-wearing, pumpkin-faced candy bucket toting, door-to-door treat collecting, CLASSIC Halloween! We can’t wait to enjoy it again soon! But, BEFORE the NIGHT on Halloween, what do you do during the day? Do you work like it’s a “regular” school day, deep into the books, reading and writing your fingers off? Do you skip school altogether and make it a day off? Do you make it a fun day whether you’re “into it” or not? Here’s what WE do. Simple, easy, fun. 1. COME IN COSTUME This is much like the evening, but if you have children who enjoy “being in character” often, then make it a DAY for costumes (as pictured below). Something about being in school in homemade costume seems to heighten the excitement, and as an educator, you can squeeze in a few “assignments” as well and they may not be as keen to refute…in costume. :) I mentioned in the “How to Enjoy Your Homeschool Spirit Week” article (see here) how we engage in similar traditional school spirit week activities in our homeschool, and the week of Halloween is a great week to engage in spirit week, too! 2. MAKE IT A MOVIE DAY Depending on if you’re opting to take the regular school route, or spruce up your day with a bit of routine-bending excitement, you’ll choose either a Halloween-themed movie, or an educational documentary that happened to be scheduled for today. Five of our favorite, non-educational, family, Halloween-ish movies that we recommend are:
3. MAKE LOTS OF SWEETS! As you know by now, we LOVE making “Chocolate Acorns” (see here) because they are the easiest and most fun desserts to make, and yield a large batch with little effort. However, on special days like HOLIDAYS, we find ourselves spending lots of time in the kitchen making sweets and treats. Our current favorite, easy, semi-homemade, go-to desserts are:
4. CREATE CRAFTS! Yes, arts and crafts are the EASIEST way to enjoy Halloween because there are SO MANY THINGS TO MAKE!!! A few of our favorites are
I LOVE & LIVE on Pinterest for many arts and crafts ideas. See here. 5. CARVE A PUMPKIN! Or just empty the insides out and say you “carved” it. I’m not quite fond of actually carving pumpkins any more for some reason, but I enjoy baking the seeds! Now that my son is here, he enjoys all the gooeyness of pulling out the brains and strings and juicy, sticky pumpkin insides (as seen in the cover photo). And even though we don’t actually cut out facial pumpkin shapes, we always have miniature pumpkins around the house with hand-drawn faces smiling back at us, like in #4 above. It works! 6. MAKE TREAT BAGS! We enjoy making treats and trinkets bags (seen below) for our friends and associates that we regularly see at our weekly establishments, including our favorite waitresses, cashiers, and especially our librarians! We often reserve a part of the day on Halloween to make and deliver treat bags to our favorite people. You could try it out, too! They’ll highly appreciate it, guaranteed. SEE! Nice and easy and stress-free Halloween-ish fun! Whether you care to make Halloween traditionally fun or uniquely, homeschool-y fun, be sure to make the day (or week) a special one. It doesn’t have to be commercial or intense. The best part for us is spending quality time together, over a movie with a giant, Frankenstein-sized bowl of popcorn, or making funny faces in the mirror. Make Halloween YOUR treat! Let us know in the comments section below how you usually spend Halloween, or how you change it up. Costume, or no? Trick-or-treat in your neighborhood, or not? Do tell! And follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, and YouTube for more fun activities and excursion ideas. Enjoy! :) “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” Albert Einstein Or, make Halloween a Field Trip Day! Be inspired by these videos & articles.
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