Halloween art is very much on my mind at the moment. What a sad life you lead is what you're probably thinking right now. But if you're kids are like my kids you'll probably have great sympathy with me. My kids are back at school and have been for over a week now thank goodness. Now the summer holiday is over they're planning the next mega event in their social calendars (I wish my social life was so busy). So what's their big concern you might very well ask. Would you believe that they're now very anxious that Halloween is only 7 weeks off. We're fast approaching a daily countdown but not quite yet. That will happen next week I bet.
"Can we go trick or treating again this year like we did last year?" is their new, really urgent,often repeated question. "Can we take our friends with us again? Please mum, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeea................se!"
Personally I'm not a big fan of trick or treating - to me it's begging and the thought of all those sweets they come back with just fills me with forboding. Lots of vibrant artificial colours awash with who know how many e numbers - just the thing to make my elder daughter's eczema flair up nastily. If only I could persuade them to ask for fruit instead of sweets ............. but that's boring grown up talk I know.
What can I do - the younger one has already dug out her witches broom from last year and keeps trying to entice our three legged cat, Otis, to have a ride on it. I wish she could find her school shoes so easily on Monday mornings.
I've decided I'd like to take a different approach to celebrating Halloween this year. Maybe I could turn it into a history lesson. We live in Lancashire in the North of England. There's a large hill in the East of this county called Pendle Hill and its very famous because of the supposed witches that lived there back in the late 1500's and early 1600's. In 1612 there was a famous trial at Lancaster, the county town, where 10 people were brought to trial accused of witchcraft. This is a fascinating tale and I found some great information for the children on this website: Educational information on Pendle Witches. There are so many learning points from them from this - history, social and geography lessons without them realising! And I plan to get them looking up some of the recommended references too.
Next weekend if the weather's fine I think we'll take them for a walk up Pendle Hill so that it really comes alive for them. It's a very steep climb but the view at the top is awesome and what's even better is that the kids should be well tired at the end of it. Check out this local information website for some of the beautiful scenery around here.
I reckon that's at least 3 weekends taken care of in the grand countdown so I just need to work out how to fill in the othe 4 before the big night. What I think I'll do is do some more surfing over the next few days but if anyone has any other great ideas on cheap halloween crafts for kids I'd be really happy to hear from them.
I'll keep you posted on how I get on!
Shelagh (low budget mother of two)
12 September 2007 (only 49 days to go)
