Halloween Countdown

Halloween preparations are in full swing at our house. I love the month-long preparation/anticipation process--it makes the holiday that much more fun for me. And I LOVE how excited Henry is about Halloween. 

As a side note, Halloween probably isn't a very Montessori holiday for young children (between dressing young children up in imaginary things when they are trying to understand the concrete world and stuffing them with unhealthy candy), but it's an important ritual in our family, which is more important to us than implementing strict Montessori.

Henry is already practicing how to say, "Trick or treat--may I have some candy please?" 

As I mentioned in my last post on the topic, Henry decided that he wanted to be an elephant. I found an amazing elephant costume that was made from a stuffed IKEA elephant, but IKEA no longer sells them. I was instead going to make him an elephant head from another IKEA thing, but then I found a $15 elephant costume at Carter's.com. I thought about taking the easy way out and ordering the inexpensive costume but decided that it would be more worthwhile and satisfying (although not as attractive) to DIY a costume with Henry. 

We trekked to IKEA to purchase what we needed, and I was celebrating the decision I made to go the DIY route. It was much more satisfying to engage with Henry in the process. However, we arrived at 9am and realized it didn't open until 10am. Ugh. We came home and promptly ordered the $15 costume. At least we did it together, right?

The costume only went up to size 24 months, so my plan was to cut off the head and alter it to fit Henry. Imagine my complete surprise when the costume arrived and actually fit my 4T-wearing toddler! 

So Henry's costume was done and done. I then moved onto Matt's costume. We decided the most affordable route would be to dress him like a bag of popcorn. Henry and I started making the cardboard shape together, with ample inspiration from Pinterest. 

Tate is going to be a little strongman. I purchased a red-white-striped shirt and will turned it into a sleeveless, scooped-neck unitard. We will make a little barbell for him to hold and draw a mustache on his face (again, treating a child like an object is very non-Montessori). 

I'm still going as a clown because I can repurpose several parts of my homemade Rainbow Brite costume from many years ago. 

To help Henry wrap his brain around time, we sat down to make a countdown chain. I cut strips of origami paper and Henry and I worked to glue them together. I made a label for the top and laminated it  so we can use it for many years to come. Now he can rip one off every day and visually see the amount of time left until Halloween. 

Hooray!

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