Children's Museum of the Upstate
My parents got M a membership at the Children's Museum for her birthday, and we have been taking full advantage of everything they have to offer. They had some great Halloween-themed art activities, including glow-in-the-dark flubber and paint (the pictures are grainy because it was completely dark in the art room!).
We also went to their "Cosmic Candy Capers" show, which was a mini-musical about space explorers who crashed onto Earth on Halloween and got sick from eating too much candy.
Fall-themed Birthday Party
M had a blast at a friend's birthday party right before Halloween. There were so many awesome games - pumpkin bowling, spider fishing, can toss, painting pumpkins, and a giant tub of corn with hidden pumpkins.
Halloween Decorations and Crafts
Most of our minimal decorating for this year involved pumpkins (see our pumpkin post), but we also did a spider web lacing activity that was fun and easy. I punched holes all the way around the edge of a paper plate, tied a piece of black yarn through one of the holes, and let M lace the other end of the yarn however she wanted to create a web. It helped that we had been exploring spiders recently after watching a large barn spider that made its home on her swing set in the back yard. (We also read Charlotte's Web after researching and discovering that Charlotte was also a barn spider.) We added a few plastic spider rings on the web and were done! M liked hanging it on the front door, then running away from it screaming "Ahhh!!! There are spiders in the house!!!"
Boo in the Zoo
We love the Greenville Zoo. My brother gets us a family membership for Christmas every year, and we go a lot. It's just the right size to see a good number of animals without feeling overwhelmed or rushing to get through everything. This was our second year going to their Halloween Boo in the Zoo event, and M enjoyed it again this year. I like that they give out some little toys in addition to candy, and they have some really neat decorations that M loves to look at. We actually went to the zoo a few times leading up to Halloween just to look at the decorations!
Enchanted Tracks at the Pavilion
This was our second year attending Enchanted Tracks as well, and we learned a few lessons last year that served us well. We signed up for our train time slot immediately, and worked our way slowly through the carnival-style games to buy us some time while we waited for the train. Aside from the train ride, M loved walking through the woods to collect candy from some of her favorite fairytale characters.
Trick-or-Treating
Greenville Place Assisted Living
There was no shortage of events on the day of Halloween. We started off by meeting some friends at Greenville Place Assisted Living. I thought it was such a neat idea that the assisted living facility was hosting a trick-or-treat event to make the holiday more enjoyable for their residents, and encourage more visitors! I try to expose M to people of all ages, so this was also a great opportunity for her to interact with people she may not normally encounter.
The residents spent weeks making decorations and games for the kids to play. She won a stuffed elephant at the bean bag toss game, and liked watching the ball fall through the bottle chutes. She had a blast! We'll definitely be back again next year!
Publix
We stopped in Publix to waste some time between the assisted living event and the start of trick-or-treating at the mall. I didn't get any pictures, but they had some cute little games set up around the store (bean bag toss, ring toss, guess the weight, etc) for the kids to play, as well as candy and cookies that they handed out.
Haywood Mall
We probably overdid it a little this year, but I was definitely successful in finding trick-or-treating events! We walked all the way around the mall, and most of the stores were participating in the event. M collected a TON of candy (maybe too much). She did get tired at one point and decided to sit down right in the middle of the floor for a break - haha! I moved her a chair and we took a break while we waited for Daddy to come to the mall after work to meet us for dinner.
Goblin Fest at Heritage Park
This was a free Greenville Rec event, so it was REALLY crowded, but it was well done. If we go again, we would definitely plan to get there much earlier to avoid waiting in the long line and to finish earlier in the evening. By the time we got there, M was pretty much trick-or-treated out, so she wasn't even interested in collecting the candy - she just wanted to hang out with her friends!
Sorting and Counting Candy
M had quite the stash after her full day of Halloween fun! She was too tired by the time we got home to do anything but change into pj's and head to bed, but we had a good time the next morning sorting her candy and counting everything!
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