With the virus and changes this year, I have been indecisive in regard to trick-or treating. No, I am not afraid a stranger will give my children Covid when handing them a candy. However, I most certainly don’t want to be the annoying person knocking on doors of people that are worried about Covid and don’t want to interact with strangers. I am aware that those with lights on are ready and willing, but since I have no idea how many houses that will entail, I don’t want to take chances. I figured my children could give everyone a break this year, the people worried and those not worried at all. I am kind of in the middle, so I will be placing my candy outside and kids that come over can help themselves to some of it. Also, I do not want to walk around my neighborhood wearing a mask. I am taking the same approach I usually take with parties. If I have to wear high heels or a mask, I may reconsider.
With all of these ideas in mind, and taking into account that Angie doesn’t really care, Yoyi just wants candy regardless of where it’s coming from (and he would prefer not to have to knock and wait), and Toni is a baby, we have decided on a Halloween party.
We started by decorating different areas of the house, all with a theme in mind.
I just got my fall pumpkins and used the Cricut to make the ghost, spider web, and boo letters. All the bats are part of a packet I got from Amazon. Very reasonable in price and includes 4 different sizes.
Now that we are all done with the decorating, on to the fun stuff. For our Halloween activities, we plan on having a lot of candy inspired activities including blind candy tasting, a pinata, and a scavenger hunt.
Blind Candy Tasting, which I intend to win after all of my years of candy tasting, will include a selection of over 15 candies: hard, soft and chocolate based. The pieces will be displayed for the contestants to see. After they have been blindfolded, 5 will be selected by the judge for tasting. The wrappers will be removed but the contestant will be allowed to keep the ones they guessed correctly. To keep track of the points earned.
The pinata does not need any explanation other than candy will be flying down from the ceiling and that will be lots of fun. Here is the one I ordered, both spooky and sweet.
My favorite part of the activities is always the scavenger hunt. The kids love scavenger hunts. Angies likes the riddles and Yoyi likes to follow Angie around. Let’s just say they are age appropriate for both. I found a lot of Halloween hunt ideas on Pinterest, so I will be sorting and picking one.
At the end of the hunt, the kids will find a bucket with … not one piece of candy. I have decided to fill it up with books and STEM challenges. I love STEM challenges and so do kids. They are fun for all and can help us learn about math, science, and how to work together.
Here are my ideas for the STEM challenges along with the books to accompany them:
-Creepy Pair of Underwear, one of my favorite spooky books, tells the story of Jasper who is hunted by creepy glowing underwear. We will be making glow in the dark jello.
-Leo, a ghost story, is a not so scary book about being kind to others. We are going to be making slime, a kid’s favorite, to help catch a ghost. And then become friends with him/her.
Do you think Yoyi will believe my stories?
We will also have a haunted house decorating station and hopefully at the end of the day, 3 super tired children.
