Halloween - Homeschooling on a Shoestring

How to have a happy Halloween without breaking your budget. Recipes, learning fun, safety tips.

Costume Ideas

Retailers make a nice bit of money on Halloween. Here are some ideas to help you beat the costs of costumes. Look to see what your child has in their dress up trunk. If your child is willing, you might be able to use what you have in there.

You can easily make a costume even if you’re not handy with a sewing machine. Basic costumes start with sweat pants and sweat shirt. Instead of using a regular sweat shirt, use a hooded sweatshirt to embellish. If you live in a warmer climate, you can use leggings or knit pants and a long sleeve shirt. A few costumes that lend themselves well here are: mouse, cat and dog. On a hooded sweatshirt, you can baste on ears, stuff and stitch on a tail, put on cotton or any light-weight gloves and add on paw prints. You can also baste on spots and tummys. Use felt for ears, spots and such. With a little creativity if you use bigger size sweats, you can turn your child into an elephant. To make a trunk, use either out-grown gray knit pants, or pants found at a thrift shop. Cut off one of the legs to make the size trunk you’ll need, stuff with fiber fill or newspapers, stitch close at both ends, add elastic to one end to fit around your child’s head to keep the trunk on. With a black marker, make trunk nostrils on the other end. Kiddo doesn’t want to be an animal this year? Add a cape and turn them into their favorite superhero, Dracula, wizard or Little Red Riding Hood. To make a cape, you can use an old solid-color tablecloth, or get a few yards of material and check out Fellowship Cloak Pattern. While their directions call for lining, you can skip that if you want. To see more ideas and get your creativity started, see Martha Stewart Halloween ideas.

More fun costume ideas:
No-Sew Costumes
Pizza Costume
Costume Ideas
Costume Closet
Bruises & Blood
Trick or Treat Bag

Halloween Safety

Talk to your children about Halloween safety. The most basic rules of safe trick-or-treating are using flashlights, putting reflector tape on costumes and staying with your group. Hopefully all children know they should not open goodies before parents check all items. Check out Halloween Food Safety Tips for more treat safety from Alabama A&M. Do not hesitate to throw something out if you are unsure about it. You may also take the treats to your local courthouse or family court to pass through their scanner.

Safety Tips from UPS
Make and play a Halloween Safety Game
Food Safety article by Lee Coyne
FDA’s Makeup Safety Tips

Are you planning the party this year? Check out Halloween on a Shoestring for fun and frual ideas for fall celebrations.

Prepare a delicious, healthy meal before your family heads out the door for trick-or-treating. My Mom carbed us up with macaroni and cheese. I’ve done the same for my child.

Fall Crafts

Easy Ghost decoration project
Take white card stock or construction paper. Trace childs foot on the white paper. Heel of the foot is the ghost’s head. Put eyes, mouth etc… at the heel end with black paper or marker. Hang with a string. Posted by reader Melissa.
More Fall crafts:
Bat Clips
Paper Scarecrow
Paper Models
Halloween Fonts

Pumpkin Patterns

Carving Pumpkins
University of Michigan Pumpkin Carving Pattern they have other college football patterns too but I”m a U of M Fan.
Darth Vader, Jack Skellington, Scooby Doo, and other characters http://spookmaster.com/pumpkin-carving-patterns-browse-traditional.htm
Detroit Lion Stencil from The Detroit Lions Facebook page
Another Detroit Lions Pumpkin Stencil
Michigan Lower Peninsula Pattern

Halloween Recipes

Jack-O-Lantern Pie
1 cup boiling water
1 (4 oz) package orange flavor Jell-o
1 pint vanilla ice cream; softened (2 cups)
1 prepared chocolate flavor crumb crust
thawed non-dairy whipped topping or whipping cream
candy corn
black licorice, cut into 1 inch pieces
Stir boiling water into gelatin in medium bowl 2 minutes or until completely dissolved. Spoon in ice cream, stirring until melted and smooth. Refrigerate 10 minutes or until slightly thickened (consistency of unbeaten egg whites). Spoon into crust. Refrigerate 3 hours or until firm. Just before serving, make Jack-O-Lantern face on pie with whipped topping, candy corn and licorice.

Pumpkin Juice
2 cups diced pumpkin
2 cups apple juice
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 cup pineapple juiceJuice the pumpkin and add the pumpkin juice to the pineapple and apple juice. Add honey and blend in a blender.Serve iced.

Sweet Pumpkin Dip
2 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, softened
1 (15 oz) can pumpkin
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 serving of sliced fruit, bite-size cinnamon graham crackers, gingersnap cookies, toasted mini-bagels, toast slices, muffins or English muffinsBeat cream cheese and pumpkin in a large mixing bowl until smooth. Add sugar, cinnamon and ginger to the pumpkin and cream cheese mixture and mix thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate for one hour.Serve as a dip or spread. Makes 5 cups.

Pumpkin Recipes

Pumpkin Spice Smoothie
Pumpkin Apple Pear Juice
Pumpkin Smoothie Bowl
Pumpkin Plantain Smoothie Bowl
Pumpkin Roll
Pumpkin Juice with Gala Apples and a Pear
Pumpkin Cake-in-a-Jar
Halloween Smoothie

Bats Learning Fun

Grand Rapids Public Museum Educator’s Activity Book About Bats
Bats are one of the most important misunderstood animals
Bat Coloring Pages https://www.batcon.org/about-bats/games-and-activities/coloring-pages/
https://www.coloring.ws/bats1.htm
Project WILD’s Resources for Teaching about Bats

For more costume and party ideas, head on over to Halloween on a Shoestring