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-building 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 (x) Holiday. 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 know 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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We visit a pumpkin patch, carve pumpkins (with extended family as a family gathering), hit up the local town activities, and do trick or treating together. AP #3 found the local malls do trick or treating and we added that to our schedule one year. We have lots of costume items left over from various things over the years so there’s lots for the APs to choose from and almost all of them have dressed up (it helps that we dress up, too). We’re usually home in time for them to go out with friends.
We do family costumes. Last year wizard of oz characters, this year Peter Pan characters. We also go to a pumpkin patch, carve pumpkins and I roast seeds and make pumpkin pie. The APs always go trick or treating with us and we usually hit and run a couple parties enroute.
It’s not a family tradition but I usually tell them about the huge haunted houses and encourage them to go with friends if that seems interesting to them. Our church also does a “Fall Festival” that is bigger than any town carnival/fair I’ve ever attended so AP has always attended that with us as well.
Pumpkin patch, Zoo Boo, trick or treating, roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin lattes/bread/muffins/etc. Last year, we were on vacation and spent Halloween on Waikiki surrounded by thousands of new friends.
We are all dressing up but the costumes are easy/low key. We bought our AP a groupon for a 5k zombie run and she’s taking a friendly AP who recently arrived.
Quick Pinterest project that works: use a sharpie to draw a ghost/jackolantern face on a white or orange balloon. Use a funnel to pour baking soda in the balloon. Pour vinegar in an empty water bottle. Seal the mouth of the balloon over the top of the bottle and shake the balloon to empty the baking soda into the vinegar. It makes a bubbly concoction and the gases expand the balloon. Super exciting for my toddler and prep time is about 2 minutes.
While we used to create Halloween memories for our AP, I’m afraid with teenagers we do nothing. We don’t even carve pumpkins anymore. However, we do makes sure our AP is off by 4:30 pm, so she may have time to shower and head over to go out and trick-or-treat with an AP friend who is caring for school-aged children. We also encourage her to hit the town later with AP friends to experience adult Halloween (hey, I remember adult Halloween – it happened 17 years ago before my eldest was born!)
It’s been my experience that APs need some benchmark experiences, and adult Halloween is one of them.
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