Every holiday gives your kids and your au pair a chance to work together, have fun and build memories with holiday-related crafts and activities.
Cultural sharing and just plain ‘ole relationship-buidling happens in the doing of things.
Given that Halloween is one of the trio of secular, nation wide cultural holidays (the other two being Thanksgiving and 4th of July), it’s one that au pairs and kids can share regardless of any differences in religious observances. A bonus, too, is that our neighbors also celebrate these holidays.
One of my favorite blogs, EverythingEtsy, regularly posts lists of 101 Free Crafts for ____ Holiday. This season they have a terrific list of activities for Halloween. Some of these are cooking, some are sewing, and many are easy, inexpensive paper crafts. I’m a sucker for a garland of holiday pennants, myself.
The Halloween Boo
There’s a great “craft plus action” activity here– the Halloween ‘Boo’. A ‘boo’ is a neighbor-to-neighbor chain ‘treat’. You boo your neighbor with a treat, then they boo someone, and on and on…
We first experienced a boo when we moved to New Jersey. One of my neighbors — I don’t kow who!– boo us every year, leaving tootsie rolls and Halloween decorations on our porch a week before Halloween.
Make some Fun
Make some Memories
Have your aupair check out the post of 101 Handmade Halloween Ideas, and she if there’s anything to tempt her/him and to create some extra (non-candy) fun with your kids.
Got any great tips for celebrating Halloween with your au pair? Please share, below.
See also:
Halloween Party Safety Concerns for my Au Pair
9 Ways to Celebrate Halloween with your Au Pair
Tip: Teach your Au Pair about Vampires
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Our au pair got a pumpkin costume, and dressed all like a pumpkin, then we took our kids to knock on all houses in my block, even my 3 year old went with us and we had a great time, we were all costume dressed last year and I look forward to go again with my current au pair, is an excellent opportunity to experience something different
How our AP has celebrated Halloween with us has changed over time. When our kids were little APs often joined us in trick-or-treating and distributing candy before heading out on their own. Now that our kids head out on their own and The Camel happily plays on her own (she isn’t able to eat candy for medical reasons), we encourage the APs to walk around the neighborhood to see the decorations and watch the kids trick-or-treat before heading out to the adult hang-out area. Halloween is quickly becoming a favorite holiday for all ages in the U.S. and as a HP I encourage APs to see the adult side as well.
last year my host kids and I decorated different jars with bats, spiders, cats and all halloween related stuffs and then we filled them with things to make it creepy when the other neighborhood kids arrived tick-or–treating. For example, one of the boys named one of the jars Witch boogers and it was baby compote with some raising, so it looked and feeled disgusting but he made the kids out the hand there before they get the candy. I thought it was too much creep but my host mom loved it and actually joined us making more disgusting things with pasta and arificial food coloring that looked like blood, it was a blast and everybody enjoyed it. We also got the dog into a costume :)
we also made some with napkins and hanged them out in the front garden tree, we got a plastic balck cat to put it in the front door and of course we carved pumkins after we arrived from the pumkin farm, we all got a costume even my host parents, HM wore a butterfly costume and my HD wore a rudolf the raindeer costume, it was really fun. I miss them so much now that I am back home and we dont really celebrate it the same way, but I made my students ( I am a kindergarten teacher) create halloween stuffs to decorate the classroom and it was cute to see them all wearing a costume while I was giving my class :)
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