Are any of you having a Halloween party for your dck's? Will you do it the Monday of Halloween or Friday before? What do you have planned? Will you have the kids come dressed up?
I'm looking for ideas for toddlers.
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Are any of you having a Halloween party for your dck's? Will you do it the Monday of Halloween or Friday before? What do you have planned? Will you have the kids come dressed up?
I'm looking for ideas for toddlers.
I don't do a halloween party as such. My group is young enough that only half of them might even be going out the rest will be going to bed. We spend the week before and after doing our halloween theme and mostly it is done with the idea of introducing the things they might see as they go around the neighbourhood - bats, ghost, jackolantern etc. and then after we talk about what they did, let them enjoy the decorations we have in the daycare now that they understand what they go with - for toddlers many of our special day celebrations are after they have experienced the event with parents and then we can explore it further in daycare now that they have some knowledge to work with - saves all the blank stares you get when you try to talk about it before.
We do a special part for all the "fun" holidays lol... manly I bake sugar cookies for decorating, we play games, do special craft, trick or treat hunt and a few other things that I'll probably think of right before..
We are going to decorate cookies and I am going to tell parents that they can come in costume if they'd like. My 11 yo dd (she is home schooled) and I will be dressing up too. I'll do colouring pages and stuff as well, but that's about it. I have a 15 mo, an 18 mo and a 2 yo that day, so they likely won't get it much, but it'll be fun for us. hehe.
Last year I went all out, because I had a bunch of school aged kids. We had themed food all day, did crafts and games, and coloring sheets, etc. We also came in costume that day.
This year I will encourage everyone to come in costume, and we will color, have some fun snacks. But I am scaling it back a bit, since I will only have one (not quite 2y/o) kid that day, plus my daughter! :)
Do any of you have DCKs who do not celebrate Halloween? I live in a very conservative area and the schools around here cannot celebrate because so many parents have complained
mama, good question! I would carry on the same way whether I had someone like this in my care or not. My house, my rules. That being said, it's not that I am ethnocentric, it's that I am willing to celebrate ANY special holiday or observance of any dck in my care, and I would expect all the kids to participate. It is my personal feeling that this should be extended to public elementary schools too, and I honestly don't understand why it isn't. For example, how does it hurt a Jewish child to sing a Christmas song at a holiday pageant? I observed this first hand at my own kids' school in recent years, where some of the children would leave the room, or hop down off stage when the Christmas songs were presented. I love that my kids are exposed to other customs and cultures in their school! Christian children are expected to sing and participate in Kwaanza and Chanukah activities - why no reciprocity? I think teaching diversity and acceptance at an early age is a good thing, and I would explain this to the parents. PHEW! That was a bit of a rant. I'll jump down off my soapbox now. ;)
If parents were not comfortable with the way I handle holidays, I would invite them to keep their child home that day. This way, they still have an option to exclude their child from festivities. Being self employed has its perks, huh?
ETA: In my contract, I actually have a paragraph inviting families to help us learn any and all customs, celebrations or different ways of life than our own.
Completely agree with Alphagetti on this. I will continue to "celebrate" the occasions that our family chooses to. If someone from another faith would like to teach us about the customs and traditions that they have, I would totally be open to it. In fact, this year at Christmas, I think we will be learning/discussing the various holidays of the season.
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Originally Posted by mamaof4
I am not concerned about it too much. I talk about holidays in my daycare handbook and also have a consent form that asks parents to check off whether they are okay with their child doing holiday crafts, etc or if they have any particular objections or things I need to be aware of.
All of my parents signed off a free pass and checked off the OKAY box for holiday crafts and activities.
I do try to minimize any kind of ghoulish skull stickers or stamps on our crafts but pumpkins and ghosts and non-scary looking witches I use :p
Any ideas for a Halloween party for three 1 and a half year olds?
Mostly for this age I would skip the party and save your energies for next year. There is a very good chance they aren't even going out or if they are it is to a few neighbourhood houses and that is it. You can introduce the shapes of halloween - pumpkin, ghost, bat but stay away from any of the spooky side of the holiday. For a craft we made bats - I found a bat picture to colour and then traced their hands and cut from black paper to glue onto the wings of the bat. We will be making ghosts on Monday by tracing their closed hands on white cardstock - make the wrist area the rounded head and then the uneven finger length becomes the bottom of the ghost. Add black marker eyes - I do this part for them - then we run them through my laminator, add a string and they fly them around the house for awhile then we tape them to the wall near the door for going home. I do this one each year and parents like to compare their child's hand size year to year.
Yes it is hard to plan for such little ones. Was thinking something small. Those ghosts sound fun I may try that! Thanks !
Our school does not allow the kids to dress up, they say its so their costumes do not get ruined at school, but since they have "Winter Concerts" instead of Christmas Concerts and "Holiday Parties" instead of Christmas Parties, I think it has more to do than that... but the kids do get a "Black & Orange Day Party" at school and since all my kids are school age, I opted to have a bit of a Halloween Party Friday (no costumes of course). we had cupcakes, did a halloween craft and played a game. Tommorow since they will be coming home all hyped up from their Orange & Black day party, I've done some Halloween snacks but not sugary, a watermelon brain (kinda coole) some creepy cheese stick fingers and some bread bones for afterschool snack.