Halloween Week!

For Halloween week, I forewent (is that a word?) our usual school routine and focused on all things Halloween! Basically, it was a low-key week with a few fun activities.

A couple days before Halloween, we painted pumpkins. I figured this would be more fun for the kids than carving, and I was right. Both Rhonda and Sierra had an amazing time and were occupied with painting for quite a while.

On Tuesday, we went to the Rockwall Library's Enchanted Forest event. (I wasn't really planning on going, but we were at the library a week before and Rhonda saw the librarian getting decorations ready for it. She asked the librarian about it and got a flyer. She was really excited about it, so of course we had to go.) The girls had fun making crafts, eating treats, and listening to storytellers. The highlight of the night was definitely the Three Little Pigs puppet show. Sierra got really excited about it and squealed and laughed every time the wolf appeared. It was really cute!

The day before Halloween, I organized a little Day of the Dead unit study. We read the picture book My Family Celebrates Day of the Dead. We made traditional Day of the Dead bread with a skull and crossbones on it. Rhonda and Sierra really enjoyed kneading the bread dough. We watched this YouTube video of a Day of the Dead parade in Mexico. Both girls were very engrossed.

We talked about why people celebrate Day of the Dead, and how people honor family members who have passed away. Rhonda surprised us at dinnertime by suggesting that we honor her Grandma Rhonda. I was very touched that she came up with this idea all on her own. We found a few things to represent her, to put on our kitchen counter as a sort of hasty ofrenda. We had a couple of pictures of her, plus a reindeer decoration she had made.

We ended the day with watching Coco.

On Halloween morning, the girls got to wear their costumes to dance class. They had so much fun in their class parties. They even had a giant unicorn!

The kids had an amazing time on Halloween night. I thought they might have enough energy to go up and down one street, but we ended up staying out for more than an hour! It was really cold, but they didn't seem to mind it.

They loved coming home and eating candy by the warm fireplace.

It was a Halloween week to remember!