If you want to find Real Fun, look for it this Halloween!
Do you know how to get your children off digital screens and out into the fresh Autumn air? Start by looking for real fun this Halloween!
My… it’s so quiet in the house. You wonder, “Where are the kids?” It’s a beautiful day of clear blue skies framing the glorious colors of Autumn. It’s a perfect day for getting outdoors in the crisp, fresh air. But, where are the kids?
You know where they are.
They are glued to their digital screens, playing Video Games or scrolling through endless YouTube offerings, or Texting back and forth and back again. Children today are more and more swallowed up by the ubiquitous, glowing screens: from cell phones to wide screen monitors… complete with earphones – so you don’t really know what they are viewing. This is not really fun.
You have probably tried to set limits to these empty digital pursuits, but they are a powerful magnet for children and teens.
There must be a way to offer refreshing, stimulating, fun activities to get the young ones away from those screens – and get them outdoors, involved in healthy activities and breathing in invigorating fresh air.
“Happy up your Day” is one of my past Blogs that reminds you how important it is to be active and engaged. You can get the ball rolling and watch the kids join in on the diversions. The following ideas are the perfect excuse for some outdoor Halloween fun!
Active Ideas for Active Children
Decorating the yard in front of your house can include the whole family – with teens as well as the younger ones. Gravestones are fun to make out of old cardboard boxes. You can paint and decorate them with bats or skull-and-crossbones. The kids can come up with amusing or scary sayings to write on each one:
“IZZY DEAD” – “BONE VOYAGE!” – “STONE COLD” – “M.T. TOMB” – “I.B.DEAD” –
“BEA A. FRAID” – “TOMB SWEET TOMB”.
Don’t forget to take pictures afterwards – not only of their creations, but have the kids get into the act. They could put on ghoulish Halloween makeup and lie down or sit up in front of a tombstone.
Old sheets make great “Ghosts” to hang from a tree; or slide the sheets over a garden stake – or rake or shovel, and line them up along the sidewalk or front steps.
You can make your own Witch Legs from cardboard. Paint them in orange and black stripes with nicely pointed witchy shoes – and stick the legs upside-down in a large garden pot.
Hang your front door or porch with black streamers. (You can cut these from large black garbage bags.)
Using paper Lunch Bags, make Halloween Luminarias. Cut out scary jack-o-lantern faces, or black cats, or bats. Put a tea candle in each one and line them up to greet your guests in the dark on All Hallows Eve!
An Autumn Outing
Find a Pumpkin Patch nearby your home. On the way there, drive through neighborhoods that have decorated their front yards and get more great Halloween ideas.
Some of the Pumpkin Patch venues have great mazes, made out of cornstalks or hay bales. You might pair an older child with a younger child, as they can “buddy-up” and both contribute to the fun of trying to find your way in and out.
Of course, it’s great to stroll the farm patches and pick out pumpkins. There are so many surprising sizes and colors. You may also want to get a stash of the tiny pumpkins to string up on the branches of a tree or hang from your porch and railings.
Apples and apple cider are usually available at these farms, too. But you may want to save apple-picking – and apple baking – for another outing/activity with the kids.
All Together Now ~
Back home, the kids can design their own jack-o-lantern faces, and then – Let the carving begin!
Save the pumpkin seeds, rinse and place on a baking sheet. Salt and put them in a 300 degree oven for about 20 minutes till they are roasted and crispy. They make a crunchy, salty snack.
Instead of carving all the pumpkins, you may want to save a few and paint them with faces or Autumn decorations.
Put the pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns outside on the steps or mixed in with the gravestones and ghosts. But save one for the kitchen table.
Story-Telling
After supper, we light the kitchen jack-o-lantern and sit around the table reading or telling fun, funny and scary stories and poems. One of the kids’ favorite poems is “Little Orphant Annie’s Come to Our House to Stay…” (James Whitcomb Riley: “… and the goblins’ll getcha if y’ don’t watch out!”)
This is great time to get the kids involved in choosing and presenting their own “Tell-a-Tale”. Here is a site for some good tales that are fun, funny… and scary.
You can always try a little excerpt from Macbeth (kids get impressed by Shakespeare!) … especially from the 3 weird witches and their scraggly voices:
“Fair is foul and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
“By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.”
For the younger children, they could tell: “It was a dark, dark night” or “The Green Ribbon” or they could sing: “Have you seen the ghost of John?” or “There were 5 Little pumpkins sitting on the Gate.”
It is surprisingly fun how the children respond to this story-telling. They are often eager to participate in each other’s Halloween Tale.
For giggle-snickens of fun, read the Halloween Night in Chapter 21 of Becoming Jesse.
“Oh! It was screaming good Halloween Fun!”
You may be happily surprised at all the real fun in these Fall and Halloween activities.
Have a ball this Fall!
Light On!
