Keep your Children Safe This Halloween

Halloween is one the most popular holidays. Kids of all ages love Halloween, big or small. They get to wear a costume and collect free candy. What;s not to like about that! Let's give our kids some specials Halloowen memories, that will stay with them for life.

Today we need to be more aware of our environment, trick or treating isn't what it used to be. Today it seems more dangerous to go outside and take candy from a stranger. We need to be responsible as adults to keeps our kids safe and give them a good experience with happy memoriess.

Here are some tips to keep your kids safe this Halloween:

• Trick or treat with your children.
• Even if you think you know the neighbor. An adult or a much older sibling should be several steps behind children when they knock on that door.
• Skip the house on the block that familiar to you or looks sketchy.
• Stay on a busy street.
• Plan a safe route.
• Go to houses that expect you.
• go only to houses with lit porches
• Kids should never go inside any house no matter what, even if you think you know the person who lives there.

Information provided by http://www.squidoo.com/halloween-safety-for-kids

Happy Halloween

Gift From Mummy Game

Here is a fun little game for you and your kids to play around Halloween. Simply take a roll of toilet paper and about 10 small prizes, such as little critters or tiny candies. Unroll the roll of toilet paper and tape a small, lightweight prize to the end of a roll of toilet tissue. Wrap up the prize in the toilet tissue and continue taping prizes and wrapping them until the roll is completely wrapped.
Ask players to sit in a circle. Each person gets to wrap the end of the toilet tissue around a body part (an arm, forehead, waist, ankle and so on) until she finds a prize. She then tears the paper and passes the roll to the next player. Play continues until all the prizes have been unrolled.
The kids end up looking like mummy's and get a prize too! What could be greater than that? We of course did not come up with this great idea all by ourselves. Click on the following link for our source and look around for other fun Halloween game ideas!
http://familyfun.go.com/halloween/halloween-games/a-gift-from-mummy-707643/

Cooking With Your Little Ones

http://secret-agent-josephine.com/blog/2008/02/

Cooking is a fun way to spend time with children of all ages. Young ones typically are eager to be helpers, while older children take pride in creating something on their own. One of the biggest advantages to having your child help in the kitchen is that you can often get a finicky eater to try foods if he has a hand in preparing them. Another plus: If you can get him to eat enough of the ingredients, you won't worry whether he'll eat the end product. This often is true of the child who won't eat vegetables at the table, but will sample them while helping you wash or peel them for dinner. 

Here are a few other positive results from interacting together in the kitchen, which are then broken down into age groups:

• Reading and following recipes improves math, science and reading comprehension skills.
• Eating dishes from other countries enables learning about other cultures, foreign languages, and geography, and provides a culinary vocabulary.
• Learning about food preparation enhances organizational and cleanliness skills.
• Chances are greater that your child will eat the healthy food you are making if he helps.
• Cooking together strengthens feelings of responsibility and being a valued member of the team, will form a lifetime of good memories and help to strengthen bonds.
• Fine motor skills are enhanced with motions like pouring and stirring; counting ingredients and amounts teaches simple math skills; and working as a team reinforces socializing, learning how to share, and taking turns.

Healthy Halloween Treats

With Halloween just around the corner, I am sure that many parents are not looking forward to all of the sugar their kids will be acquiring while Trick-or-Treating. I decided to look around and see what healthy, spooky alternatives I could find so that parents had more options than just candy this season. Below are some of my favorites that I found. Not only are they healthier, but they are so easy and fun too!

Carrot Finger Food

Ingredients 

• vegetable dip
• 4 long carrots
• 1 medium carrot
• softened cream cheese
• sliced-almond
• baby carrots

 Instructions

1. To prepare them, just fill a serving bowl with your favorite vegetable dip. Wash and peel 4 long carrots for fingers and 1 medium carrot for a thumb.
   
2. With a paring knife (a parent's job), cut a flat, shallow notch in the tip of each carrot. Then use a dab of dip or softened cream cheese to glue a sliced-almond fingernail atop each notch.
   
3. Stick the fingers in the dip, as shown, and serve with plenty of peeled baby carrots for dipping.
   
   
   
    Melon Brain
   Ingredients: 1 small seedless watermelon
      

   Instructions

1. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the entire green rind, exposing the inner white rind.
   
2. Slice off the bottom of the melon to create a flat base that will keep it from rolling. With a toothpick, outline squiggly furrows that resemble the folded surface of a brain.
   
3. Finally, carve narrow channels along the tracings with a sharp paring knife (a parent's job) to expose the pink fruit beneath the rind.
   

Recipes taken from here and here.

Homemade Halloween Costumes

There are many commercial costumes available at the local stores, however between the cost, and lack of imagination, and the fact you end up with a half dozen kids all looking the same at a party. Here is website that show you step by step how to make fun homemade costumes.

http://crafts.slides.kaboose.com/254-homemade-halloween-costumes

Happy Halloween!!!!

Try, Try Again

Practice makes perfect. Being persistent is one of the best lessons you can teach your children. Persistence can be taught by allowing children to play an instrument or a team sport. Kids need to understand that skills requiring practice are worth acquiring. Short-term payoffs won't sustain a person in the long run. Encourage your child to regularly practice something daily. Don't shy away from skills that challenge them, such as reading or painting. Establish a one month rile. Every new activity should be practiced for at least a month. The life lesson of persistence will help kids endure challenges until they achieve success. 

Read more:  http://www.ehow.com/way_5296258_life-lessons-children.html#ixzz11P80xq16

How to create a texture board for your child

Everything in the world can be described by using our sense of touch. We describe the physical characteristics of things from their textures. Teaching your child about different textures allows them to make use of their observation skills. Knowing the different textures will also improve their ability to use descriptive and expressive vocabulary. You can teach your child such descriptive words like smooth, rough, bumpy, etc.

Here is an awesome way of making an inexpensive texture board for your child:

Build a texture board

Materials: Glue, scissors, construction paper, cotton balls, aluminum foil, sandpaper, dried leaves. etc

Description: Paste these materials, along with others that have a distinctive texture, onto construction paper. Have your child feel these items and then search the house for items that have the same characteristics.

(Note: you can also create a texture quilt instead of a board)