Samhain for children

Once upon a time in the Celtic lands the nights became longer, colder  and  the leaves began to fall. The harvest season was ending and the winter was creeping in. The beginning of the dark season meant the door to the Otherworld would be open allowing fairies and  the souls of the dead and other spooky beings to pass into our world.
The people lit huge bonfires  and celebrated the dead with a huge festival called Samhain.  They had huge feasts and beckoned the souls of their dead relatives to celebrate with them.
Today we celebrate this time of year with Halloween but all  the things we like to do on Halloween today all evolved from  the Samhain festival that happened lots and lots of years ago.

Carving Jack O Lanterns 

During Samhain the people were frightened of the nasty evil spirits and fairies that passed through the door from the otherside. They did lots of things to protect themselves.
They made lanterns and carved scary faces into turnips and placed them in their windows to protect their homes.
Years later some of the people traveled by boat to North America (which was far far away) and passed the tradition of carving lanterns to the Americans. Turnips were really hard to find in the new lands so Pumpkins were used instead. They found that pumpkins were a lot easier to carve and made better lanterns.


We had a go at carving a turnip. It was really tricky.

Trick or treating

During Samhain the people  left food and drink out as a peace offering to the spirits, fairies, and creatures from the otherside to try stop them from becoming angry.  Over the centuries people started getting dressed up like the dreadful creatures and performing in exchange for food and drink. People started making Soul cakes which were used as a offering for the dead and were given to children and poor people who went door to door singing songs and saying a prayer for the dead. When a soul cake was eaten it represented a soul of  the dead being freed. 

We had a go at making our own soul cakes and sang a song that was traditionally sang in exchange for them.

Soul Cake Recipe 

340g plain flour
170g sugar
170g butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp  mixed spice
pinch nutmeg
1 egg beaten
2 tsp white wine vinegar

Mix all the dry ingredients.

 Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs

Add the egg and white wine vinegar and knead until soft.

Cover and put into fridge for 20 mins.
Preheat the oven to 200 °C Roll the dough out until it is around  7mm thick and cut into rounds.

Draw a cross shape on the top of the dough

Place on a greased baking tray and bake 15 - 20 mins

Cool for a few minutes and enjoy. We all found them very yummy.

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Mummy Bowling

We set up a spooky game of Mummy Bowling for Halloween. I covered three tins in coloured paper to use as skittles and let the kids draw spooky faces on them. We then covered a ball in toilet roll to make a mummies head for our bowling ball. Bandage would have been better but unfortunately I didn't have any left.

Ghoul Jelly

We added ghost Haribos to some green jelly to make a spooky treat 

Jack O Lantern

Meet our Jack O lantern all lit up :) Earlier we used parts of him to make star prints 

Spooky Twister

 The children cut out pumpkins, spiders, ghosts, and bats and taped them to the mat to spook up a game of twister. 

Pumpkin Star Prints

After carving our Jack O Lanterns face we carved two stars at the back.

We then used the star shapes left over as paint stamps. (make sure the back of the star is level)

I managed to get a quick picture before they got stamp happy and covered the sheet with that many stars they start to resemble a giant blob of mixed colours ;)

Witch trick or treat box

Lift the witches hat  to gobble up her gruesome  brains 

We decorated a muffin box with green paper for the witches face then glued a homemade witches hat to the lid. We then shredded some red paper and glued it to the inside of the muffin lid to look like brains.

We then filled our muffin box full of  yummy strawberry laces and chocolate eyeballs. :)

Halloween games

Toss the ring at the witch hat

This was a spur of the moment idea after finding some party hats hiding in the back of the cuboard. The kids stuffed  the hats with newspaper to make them sturdier and stuck them onto some card covered in blue paper.  We then cut out some cardboard rings to be tossed around the cone of the hats.

I may replace the hats later with some cheap fabric hats. They can be purchased at local supermarkets for 50p and with enough stuffing they should be sturdy enough to throw hoops at.

Mummy ball

Originally I wrapped up the ball to make a mummy bowling ball game but then realised the plastic bottles I planned on using for the skittles had made their way into the recycling bin. However the children were still happy and have been playing roll the ball with their mummy head. I will hunt around tomorrow to try find something we can use as skittles to make this mummy ball a bit more spooktacular

Ghost pops

My little girl made some spooky treats by wrapping some lollipops in white fabric :)