HALLOWEEN With Your Child
Halloween is the one holiday out of the year that your child has the ability to bring their imagination and ability to engage that imagination into the entire month into full fruition. Should Halloween only be celebrated on just October 31st? I think that we, as parents, should take advantage of this holiday and give our children a month full of memories, excitement, and be a part of enhancing their imagination and creativeness.
Halloween Activities
What are some activities we are able to do with our children that can represent this spooky month? The most obvious activity would have to be the pumpkin patch. This is typically a farm that presents homemade activities and self grown pumpkins for the price of a small admission fee. Trust me, your child will love it!
I have been taking my daughter to the pumpkin patch every year since she was born and sometimes multiple times in the same year. Never once, has it yet to disappoint. I let her lead me in the corn maze and pick her own pumpkin. She spends the next hour or two just running around and playing with other kids and participating in the activities provided. This is her free time! I let her explore, engage, and let her lead the charge as I follow and just watch over her with a smile.
It is very important to not micromanage your children, especially when it comes to large activities. You have to let them learn and fail, engage and observe, lead and take initiative. How will our children grow and develop properly without the parents giving them the ability to be able to flourish through experiences. Look at the world we live in now! Coddling our children and not letting them learn and experience for themselves does them no justice. Guiding them and playing alongside them should be our only involvement when it comes to large group activities, such as a pumpkin patch.
What other activities can we get out of Halloween, prior to the day itself? Crafting!
Spooky Decoration!
You have bought Halloween decorations for years I am guessing. You may have even allowed your children to help you put them up in your house (which is a GOOD JOB moment for you, by the way). Let’s take a slightly different approach this time and do an activity that I preach on consistently…CRAFT TIME!
Crafting helps our children in so many ways! The technical skills my daughter develops from using the scissors, putting down glue, coloring, and portioning the glitter or sequins cannot be learned in any other way that is as fun for them as the creation of an object. Their brains stay wired as their creativeness and imagination flows through them. Parents need to have patience with this and stay encouraging. It is also important to be honest! If they ask you how it looks, tell them the truth. I am not suggesting you tell them it looks bad, by no means. You can, however, give suggestions on slight changes or show them how to do something properly and be very supportive about it. How can they become better at a task if we lie to them instead of giving them positive and constructive criticism?
Some Halloween crafting ideas you can look up are: painted monster stones, spooky streamer cut-outs, popsicle stick haunted houses, or homemade spooky masks. A craft my daughter and I just finished up this past weekend was spooky popsicle stick door hangers. This was a very fun and interesting activity, which turned out great and is hanging on the doors right now.
Wrapping It Up
So what is the purpose of celebrating Halloween as a holiday season, instead of just 1 day out of the year? The purpose is to give your children multiple fond memories, enhance their imagination and creativeness, and give them some sort of holiday spirit. A holiday spirit, for any holiday, is sorely lacking in society. This is the parents’ fault! If we, as parents, become more engaged and think beyond the surface level of development for our children, our kids would flourish in mind, body, and spirit. Just some SPOOKY food for thought!
