Learning about the festival of Halloween

Unlike many people we don't celebrate Halloween in our house, we prefer to celebrate the light of the gospel rather than the darkness of the occult.  I was reminded of this verse this morning when it popped up on my Facebook newsfeed and it sums up our views on Halloween entirely.

As our boys grow up we hope to teach them about Halloween and why other people may celebrate it, but we will group it together with other festivals such as Diwali, Hanukkah or Chinese New Year - festivals we don't celebrate ourselves but learn about them as part of our world diversity.  So that being said, these past couple of days we've been learning about and exploring some items associated with Halloween that are also a natural part of Autumn - spiders and pumpkins :)

First of all we looked for a spiders web to see how awesome and beautiful they are!  Fortunately we didn't need to look far as we found a HUGE one on our washing line.  It was quite hard to photograph in the light so this photo doesn't do it justice, but this was the inspiration for our spider games, crafts and activities this week...

The first activity we did was a spiders web balancing and collecting bugs game.  I taped some electrical tape to the rug then scattered around some buttons I had.  I didn't have any flies so Daniel had to make do with some bumble bee and frog buttons!  They were the closest I had!  There wasn't too much to do in this game but it fitted Daniel's level of ability well - he just walked up and down the web collecting the bugs as he went.  We then sat down and did some sorting of the buttons - until the dog got a bit too interested and wanted to eat the frogs!

I then found some cheap plastic spiders in the seasonal aisle in Morrisons so I bought a couple to do some water play with.  We sang and played Incy Wincy Spider using a washing up bowl of water, a cut up empty orange squash bottle and a toy watering can.  Daniel had no fear in playing with the spiders - I personally didn't like them as they looked a bit too real!  He had great fun walking them up the spout then watering them back down again.

We were very hungry after all that splashing so using the spiders web as inspiration we made some cheesy webby pizzas!  Yum Yum!  They got a little bit burnt as Ben had a poosplosion whilst they were cooking!  They were still very tasty though and Daniel gave it his seal of approval - a clean plate!

Then in the afternoon we did some spider painting.  We made a large blue spider out of a paper plate and some pipe cleaners.  Then we did some handprint painting to make some small spiders.  Daniel's ended up looking more like a crab than a spider but it was close!  I keep trying to do messy things with Daniel to help work on his sensory issues and I think we are making progress.  He still cried a little bit when he got paint on his hands but this time it was only a cry not a scream and a meltdown... we may get there one day.

By then we were all spidered out!  Over the couple of days we also did some pumpkin activities.  First up we made some chocolate crispy cakes - made into little pumpkins by using white chocolate with orange food colouring, and with a green M&M to make the stalk.

Secondly we decided to try and grow some pumpkin seeds - using the pumpkin as a pot :)  Nobody in our family is green fingered so we have no idea how this is going to turn out but I'll probably put money on us killing whatever grows in a matter of days!  Daniel enjoyed making a mess of the kitchen floor by getting soil everywhere!  We roasted the seeds we didn't use and had a yummy snack - Daniel wasn't so fond of these though - all the more for Mummy and Daddy ;)

All in all I think Daniel has enjoyed learning about some aspects of Halloween.  Next up... Bonfire Night :D

Nikki x