If traipsing up and down busy streets knocking on strangers doors to ask for candy isn’t your thing. Or even Trunk or Treat’s. No worries. You didn’t violate some parental holiday agreement.

We’ve yet to have a traditional Halloween with our children.

It wasn’t something we intentionally set out to boycott (we don’t). My husband and I have fond memories dressing up and going trick-or-treating in our neighborhoods or church festivals. So far, it just hasn’t seemed to happen. And I’m okay with that.

2009. Joey was 11 months old. He didn’t need candy, so why go ask strangers for candy that would obviously be for myself? Awkward. Our church was hosting a Halloween party in a community of seniors, which is where we spent our evening. I hadn’t planned on getting Joey a costume, but the movie Where the Wild Things Are had just come out and I was inspired.

I ended up taking an old housecoat and making him a Max costume into the wee hours of the night. I don’t regret it one bit. And he was adorable.

2010. I was very pregnant with Otto and my husband was working 2nd shift at the time. We ended up heading to our zoo’s Halloween party, which turned out to be a lot like waiting in the security line at the airport. Every once and awhile there’d be a group passing out candy and a movie backdrop for pictures. Also note the incredible, ingenuity in Joey’s costume: jeans, plaid shirt, Chucks, and a cowboy hat. How’s that for a costume? We called it Urban Cowboy.

2011. This was the first year we actually considered going door to door, but we lived in an apartment complex and the idea of steps with a baby and a toddler just wasn’t appealing. My mom bought Joey a knight set and the cape was a hand me down of my brother’s. Our neighbor found Otto’s dragon costume at a thrift store, and it was all just too ridiculously cute.

Since the boys didn’t care (or know) about the free candy for door knocking, we took them to a park and let them run around. Afterward, we went to a local bakery and let Joey get the biggest upside-down, iced cupcake he’d ever seen. It was awesome.

2012. This was an eventful Halloween. It was the day I went into labor with Olivia. There were no costumes. (I take that back. My dad’s birthday is a few days before Halloween and he had a costume party the weekend before. The boys were pirates–from the dress-up box. I was Mother Earth…great with child.) But still, no candy. But there was pie. Apple pie to be exact. While timing my contractions and waiting for labor to progress enough to leave for the birth center, I baked a pie. I know it sounds crazy, but it kept my mind off labor. The boys carved pumpkins with my parents and Olivia waited just a few hours past Halloween to make her arrival.

2013. No plans. No energy. Life as mother to 3, finally settling into a new house. All the costumes came from our dress-up box. Notice anything familiar? Yep, Otto’s wearing the same cowboy costume Joey did. Except we upped our game a little bit with a vest (hey! a pirate wore this last year!) and hand-me-down cowboy boots from a friend.

We ended up “trick-or-treating” at my husband’s office, during the day. The kids got loads of candy and Joe got to show off his cuties. We did a short part of Trunk-or-Treat at my parents church, but it wasn’t really my thing. It reminded me of the zoo Halloween. Shuffle, shuffle, stand.

2014. This year I think, perhaps, we might join some friends for trick-or-treating. Apparently, their neighborhood is the classic, go-to place for candy knocking. And since everyone can walk, why not? It may be an epic failure or the best night ever. We’ll see.

We even splurged and bought costumes (with Grammie’s help). Joey’s going to be his favorite superhero of all time, who also happens to be an inventor and scientist (his favorite), Iron Man. Otto is dressing up as his favorite villain redeemed, Darth Vader. And Olivia? She’s going to be the world’s favorite snow queen. Yep, Elsa. Shhh…she doesn’t know yet. The costume is technically her birthday gift, but a day early.

Moral of the story?

Do what works for your family. And a well-stocked dress-up box comes in handy.

Happy Halloween!

I really can’t say how much it helps me to get outside and take a walk. Even with the kids.

It’s funny though, because I tend to have a love-hate relationship with the great outdoors. I want to be a naturalist, but I don’t care for the sweating or all the prepping that can come with taking little children on 1-mile excursions. I try to pack light, but who wants to be ½ mile from the car when a kid has a diaper explosion and you’re diaperless? 

But, still, even when I trudge through the hard parts and even though I realize there’s a good chance I’m carrying someone back, I still feel better when we’ve taken a long walk outside. I prefer the woods, or at least the feeling of woods, rather than our suburban, sidewalk-less neighborhood. It’s more peaceful and gives the kids more freedom to run ahead and explore in the bushes without worrying about cars whizzing by.

So, if you want to be an outdoorsy person, but aren’t know you’re not alone. Things may be a little new the first few times, but you’ll get the hang of it. You’ll learn it’s okay to just roll with whatever comes and that, by and large, nothing terrible is going to happen. You might just leave some stress behind you.

Here’s a few guided-nature walks we’ve been doing this fall:

Backyard Nature Walk

Keeping it simple. What can we find in our yard that tells us fall is here? If we look closely, can we find acorns? Pine cones? Mushrooms?

Do we hear birds? Here, most of our birds go away during the hot summer months and in the last few weeks we’ve started to see (and hear) some old friends return.

Monarch Butterflies? It’s the fourth generation of these creatures, born in September and October, that migrate to warmer climates for the winter. Perhaps you’ll see some pass your way—we saw one just today!

How does the air feel? Can we see the effects of the wind?

Remember, nature walks aren’t only about what we can see with our eyes or pick up with our hands. Tap into your other senses to look beyond what you see.

The Leaf Game

How many leaves can you find? What’s the biggest leaf you can find? The smallest?

Can you find leaves that are red, yellow, orange, or brown? (Sadly, we don’t get many orange or red leaves here.)

If you have a large variety of trees in your backyard or walking paths, gather a couple of leaves from a sampling of different trees. You can press the leaves for bookmarks, make a leaf bunting, or identify the types of leaves with help from a book. You could even laminate pressed leaves on cardstock to use in different activities.

The Rainbow Nature Walk

Can you find a natural object for every color of the rainbow? This could be a little more of a challenge to find each color, but if you look closely I bet you could.

Or, you can make it a challenge each time you go outside you’ll be on the lookout for a color to add to your rainbow collection. Perhaps you’ll find a pink flower in a flower bed at the doctor’s office or purple berries in a shrub at a park.

I love fall, I really do. Not in a Pumpkin Spice Latte (I’m more of a Salted Caramel Mocha girl anyway), bust out the boots and sweaters kind of love. But the way the seasons move and change, I love noticing how one day the wind is cooler, the ground crunches with leaves, and the air smells different.

With the autumn equinox I feel I’ve been granted permission to bake an apple pie and start pulling out soup recipes again–to slow down. (Oh, how I love my Dutch oven!) Even if the weather is still warm, fall marks a definite march away from the sweltering Southern humidity and I can rest assured cooler weather and calmer days are coming. For me, fall is a chance to breathe after a whirlwind of summer activities.

I know some places in the U.S. are already nestled in their sweaters, while others are sweltering in the hottest month of the year. We had a beautiful, cool (in the 60’s), windows open first week of fall. Now, a few weeks later, it’s in the 80’s again. It won’t last. Promise.

Even when it doesn’t feel like fall, you can still welcome fall and beckon it’s reprieve with these simple and fun activities:

10 Ways to Welcome Fall

1. Check out seasonal books from the library. A few of our favorites are: The Wonders of the Seasons, Tasha Tudor’s A Time to Keep and Around the Year, The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton (her picture books are some of my favorites), and Autumn is Here!, which is written by Heidi Pross Gray a friend of mine from high school and she also owns the shop (& blog) Cake in the Morn.

2. Make your first soup of the season. This year’s was a Butternut Squash Cocoa Chili. Easier and tastier than it sounds. Plus it’s crockpot friendly!

3. Light a scented candle. This year’s came from TJ Maxx. And actually smells like pumpkin. Win-win.

4. Go apple picking. Last year we took the whole family apple picking during our local orchard’s Johnny Appleseed festival. It was a lot of fun. This year I was so on top of things, we got to the counter to get our U-pick bags and found out picking season ended the weekend before. Go, mom! Oh, well. We got our apple donuts and hard cider, then ended up seeing two roosters fight. Not all was lost.

Also, babies grow. 🙁

5. Take a nature walk. The easiest activity on the list. Other than #8. If you’re near a state park, woods, or a walking trail meander there. If the only place close by is a city park, or even your street, then do it! If you look closely, you’ll still be able to notice the little ways the seasons are changing.

6. Gather leaves for an art project. Last year we painted magnolia leaves and made leaf imprints/shadings. This year we’re going to try The Artful Parent’s leaf banner.

7. Bake a pumpkin or apple treat. Pumpkin muffins and apple pie are our go to recipes.

8. Open your windows. On those first few days when the weather drops into the 70’s, turn off the A/C and get a good breeze flowing through your house.

9 . Read outside. Just keeping it simple. Necessities: a book, you, the kids (maybe just you? lucky), a blanket if you’re not a fan of the grass. Easy, peasy.

10. Memorize a fall poem. This year we’re memorizing a short little poem by George Eliot,

“Come said the wind to the leaves one day,

Come o’er the meadow and we will play,

Put on your dresses of scarlet and gold.

For summer is gone and the days grow cold.”

(You can find the poem as a printable from On Sutton Place.)

What are some of your favorite fall activities?

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I love the change of seasons and adapting traditional Montessori activities to flow with the seasons. This weekend I spent a few hours pulling out all my fall materials, adding new ones to the mix and strewing them across the school room floor to build new activities. It’s the kind of fun only teachers (and those of us with OCD tendencies) really enjoy.

It’s not without its minor stressors. Kids wanting to do the work as soon as they see it on the floor. Olivia tasting the candy corn for counting. “Mmm, yum!” (Like I didn’t see it coming, but you can hope!) Or setting something in front of the laminator and having to redo a whole sheet of laminating. Fun, fun.

But still–look at all that orange! And pumpkins! And smiling Jack O’Lanterns!

I love it.

Practical Life Activities

Tweezing Pumpkins

Tonging Pom Poms

Weaving a Mat

Pencil Sharpening 

Sorting Halloween Objects 

A few other ideas – Pouring colored rice, pouring dyed water (maybe with some glitter?), spooning pumpkins (I have round mini-pumpkins! Why didn’t I do this?)

Language Activities

Pin Poking – Pumpkins, Candy Corn (curvlinear triangle), and Ghosts

Letter Writing Tray

A few other activities I didn’t get pictures of were:

Halloween Memory Game – I’m is super easy from years go by. I cut 9 cards out of black cardstock for the background, then used Halloween or costume-esque scrapbook paper for the matching cards. Layered the two, then laminated. Voila!

It’d also be fun to take pictures of family members (or classmates) in their Halloween costumes from previous years and use the pictures for the memory cards.

Play Dough – with fall or Halloween cookie cutters, use black, orange, yellow, purple, and/or bright green for playdough. Here’s my go to DIY playdough recipe from The Artful Parent.

Math Activities

Counting Candy Corn – Yes, this is a tempting work. We’ve already lost a few candy corn to the youngest. For now, the candy corn is in a bag and has to be requested for the work.

Sensorial Activities

Matching Pumpkins

Patterning – I took a leap with the pattern cards. It’s one-part brilliant, one-part ‘Make it work.’ I scanned them. Yep. That’s it. I patterned those little erasers on my scanner, put a piece of white cardstock on top, then scanned it as a PDF. It’s not perfection, but it saved time and works! 

I made this patterning work with Joey and Otto in mind. I made pattern strips as a jumping point and to give them ideas to make their own. Today I walked into the school room to see Olivia using it to match the objects to their picture, even holding a pumpkin or cat by a picture to see if it matches. If it doesn’t she says “no” and moves to the next picture in order. I’m so impressed with her concentration and confidence.

Making Jack O’ Lantern Faces – You also could do this as a shape, cutting, and gluing work, where the children cut out their own trace, cut, and glue their own shapes on a pumpkin.

Resources

I’ve picked up a lot of my Halloween materials from the Target Dollar section (erasers, candy corn & Jack O Lantern bowls, pumpkin box & buckets,  erasers, pencils) and Michael’s dollar section (stamps, Halloween paper foam matching pumpkins).