This year Ale unexpectedly got very excited about Halloween. All the way back in August. He patiently waited till October and till the leaves would start turning color. But when first leaves turned red and yellow there was no holding him back! And it is amazing how children bring back the magic into grown up lives as all of us, even my mom who is not into any of the Halloween themed things, got excited with him and got busy crafting skeletons and witch hats, baking ghost cookies, carving pumpkins and making all sorts of things to make Ale’s Halloween dreams come true. 🙂

My boys are very young, so when it came to Halloween themed books I was very fortunate to have come across this most lovely book. It is so perfect for children. The story is short and told in catchy rhymes, the characters and endearing and the story is very positive. And because it is told as a rhyme it is fun to remember and play out. And turns out there are so many beautiful online resources accompanying this book, so you could make coloring pages, puppet theater and much more.

And last, but not least, we were delighted to discover that there is actually an incredibly beautiful animated film created based on this book and is available on iTunes. Needless to say we watched it a million times over laughing and enjoying every little bit of it.

Room on the Broom book

The witch had a cat
     and a hat that was back,
And long ginger hair
     in a braid down her back.
How the car purred
     and how the witch grinned,
As they sat on their broomstick
     and flew through the wind.

The book is by amazing Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler. Check out their websites for other beautiful books and illustrations for children.

Room on the Broom movie

The Room on the Broom movie is everything Halloween should be for children — it has magic, humor, charming characters and very kind story. I highly recommend it.

We bought our Room on the Broom movie at iTunes, but it is available at other sources as well. Here is a little trailer for it.

Also check out the website for Magic Light Pictures to see other wonderful animated films by the same production company.

Room on the Broom activities:
lollipop and finger puppets, games and party

If you search Google and Pinterest there are many nice resources for Room on the Broom activities. Here are the ones I liked the best.

Room on the Broom lollipop and finger puppets

I don’t remember where, but I came across these beautiful printout for lollipop and finger puppets that you can see above. It says they are copyrighted art by Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler and licensed by the wonderful Magic Light Pictures. But I couldn’t find the links to these files on their websites, so I uploaded them here for you to download. Simply click on either picture above or these links and they will automatically download for you. Lollipop Puppets and Finger Puppets. And if you happen to know the original source of these please share with me and I’ll make sure I updated the links to point to that source.

Room on the Broom party ideas — invitations and games

I also came across this wonderful website which has some Room on the Broom part ideas (and many other nice things). I personally not into scary and bloody Halloween themes, but I quite liked their games. Like Best Dressed Hat, Musical Brooms game as a variation of Musical Chairs, Witches’ hunt. Click here for Room on the Broom Party ideas.

A quick word on Halloween Candy

Lastly, I wanted to write few thoughts about the whole Halloween candy mania. I’m strongly against it for many reasons. Unhealthy. Plastic trash. Wasteful. And one of the reasons is I feel the Halloween became so commercialized for children where they knock on the door, hardly bother show you their costume less so to say Hello, grab handfuls of candy and run to the next house.

So I’ve been trying to figure out how to avoid all that with my children, while still letting them have a magical celebration and participate in the fun of it all. So this is what I decided we’ll doL

• Buy dried fruit in bulk at Wholefoods (mango, pineapple, dates and figs, etc).
• You can also buy most delicious and chemical-free chocolate goodies from our dear friends Bon Bon Bombardier. You can contact Jenny and Sean and ask if they can send you chocolate wrapped in brown paper instead of plastic envelopes.
• We also are making some candy at home. We have some frozen plums left from our harvest, we dried them a bit, stuffed with a walnut and dipped in chocolate. It is so delicious. We are also planning to get some dried figs, chop them up with sunflower seeds, make little balls and then dipped in chocolate.
• I will wrap dried fruits and home-made candy in beautiful colored aluminum foil I ordered from Amazon. I can help my kids to unwrap the candy gently and save the wrappers for Xmas candy gifts.
• Lastly I’m dropping off these special custom chocolate goodies with some of our neighbors and tell them that my children will be coming and they are very excited to show their costumes (home-made of course!) and to please give them these special candy. Fortunately, we have good relationship with many neighbors and so I can arrange that no problem. 🙂

So there is my plan for our non-commercial and magical Halloween! I’d love to learn any of your sustainable and healthy Halloween tricks 🙂