Graham Cracker Haunted Houses

We made edible haunted houses using graham crackers, chocolate frosting, ghost marshmallows, and Halloween sprinkles.  The kids had a lot of fun making these!

The frosting is Pillsbury Easy Frost chocolate frosting.  It was easy for the kids to use it to stick the graham crackers together and to stick decorations in place.

We finished the haunted fun by reading In the Haunted House by Eve Bunting.  This is a fun, slightly spooky (fun and silly, not scary) book about two children walking through a haunted house.

Another one of our favorite haunted house books is

Ten Timid Ghosts by Jennifer O'Connell.  It really is a fun read.  Ten timid ghosts live in a haunted house, but a witch moves in and wants them out.  She plays tricks to scare them away, but in the end, the ghosts play their own trick.  We love the rhymes and the countdown is a nice bonus.

Halloween Marshmallows

Two years ago (where does time go?) we had quite the stash of marshmallows for some reason and I decided to get creative with some of the huge campfire marshmallows left over from the summer.  We had so much fun with it, that I thought I would share some old pictures with you.

A Wilton food writer marker turned marshmallows into ghosts and mummies.

The kids and I melted some orange and green Wilton candy melts to cover a few marshmallows.

The green candy coated marshmallows became Frankenstein's monster with a little help from black icing, white frosting, and chocolate chips.

I think the cracked look makes him look just right.  It wasn't intentional!

I'm sure you can guess what became of the orange coated marshmallows....

our very own pumpkin patch!  

(The stems were created with green Betty Crocker cupcake icing - the kind you squirt out of the can.)

It seems like we were just talking about back to school stuff, and it's already time for Halloween fun!  Do your kids trick or treat?  What will they be dressed as this year?  We have a grim reaper (yikes), a spiderweb queen, and a ladybug, plus one teenager who stays home and hands out candy so that Mom and Dad can trick or treat with the kids for a bit.

What is your favorite Halloween book for kids?  We are big fans of Natasha Wing, and we like her book, The Night Before Halloween.

It has trick or treaters, spooky, but not too spooky, creatures, and a fun, rhyming Halloween twist on The Night Before Christmas.  Check it out and let me know what you think!  

Pirate Fun

We had so much fun with The Pirate Girl's Treasure, An Origami Adventure, by Peyton Leung and Hilary Leung.  The pirate girl heads out on a quest to claim the mysterious treasure left for her by her pirate grandfather.  She has quite the adventure full of obstacles like a mountain, lightning, a shark attack, and more.  The book is fun, but we loved that the last few pages include directions to retrace the steps of the pirate girl's adventure in origami.  

The book was perfect for our small celebration of  Talk Like a Pirate Day.

We didn't have a special snack this year, but way back in 2009, I made a pirate muffin tin lunch.  I have to do this again!  I feel like I was so much more creative then; I have been slacking.

Our muffin pan was transformed into a pirate ship. On the top left there is a pirate walking the plank (fruit leather), there are wooden legs (pretzels) in the top middle, and crackers for Polly in the top right. On the bottom left there is a Jolly Roger grilled cheese sandwich (I cut it freehand so it's not perfect), the bottom middle cup is filled with emeralds (peas), and the bottom right cup has rubies (strawberries) and sapphires (blueberries).

The Apple Pie Tree

The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall is a fun book that follows each season of an apple tree as it grows leaves, blossoms, and apples.  When the apples are ready to be picked, it is time to make an apple pie!

Instead of making apple pie, we made apple pie dip.  Oh my, this is SO good!  You can find the recipe on the Family Fun magazine website.  Click on that link now and get this recipe because you will want to serve this at your next party or social event.  Really, it's that good!

Of course you need something to be dipped into this deliciousness.  The recipe called for using tortillas, but we used a Pillsbury pie crust instead.  I just unrolled the crust, brushed on melted butter, sprinkled on cinnamon and sugar and then used our fall cookie cutters to cut shapes from the crust.  Then I baked them in a 350 degree oven for about ten minutes.

School Bus Cake

I made this cake for my kids two years ago on the first day of school.  They loved it.  It may reappear this year.  My kids still have a few weeks before the school bus returns.

You can find directions to make this school bus cake on the Family Fun magazine website.  They make it look easy, and their cake is much prettier.

One of our favorite school bus books is The Haunted Ghoul Bus by Lisa Trumbauer.

You can't help but laugh at the silliness of a boy getting on the wrong bus and finding himself surrounded by spooky creatures.  This book is fun for laughs at the beginning of the school year (as long as your child is secure enough to know that he or she will not end up in this predicament!) and will last right through to Halloween.

For a more traditional school bus book, check out School Bus by Donald Crews.

When my children were preschool age, we read this book over and over again.

Do you have a favorite school bus book?

Patriotic Fruity Flag

If you need a healthy, fun snack for Memorial Day, Flag Day, or Independence Day, this is perfect.

To make this flag, you need:

• blueberries
• banana slices
• chunks of watermelon
• skewers

Simply skewer the fruit to look like a flag.  It doesn't get much easier.

Check out I Pledge Allegiance by Bill Martin Jr. and Michael Sampson and illustrated by Chris Raschka.  This is the best book I have ever seen to help kids understand the pledge of allegiance.

Chango Bars

My son's second grade class recently read Jalapeno Bagels by Natasha  Wing.

Pablo, the main character, has to bring something in to school for International Day, but he can't decide what to bring.  His parents own a Mexican-Jewish bakery and he considers some of the Mexican treats and some of the Jewish treats.  In the end, he decides to bring jalapeno bagels because they are the perfect combination of two cultures, just like him.  The story is based on a real bakery in Arcata, California - Los Bagels; you can order jalapeno bagels from their website and try them for yourself.

One of the Mexican treats mentioned in the book is chango bars (a chocolate chip cookie bar), and there is a recipe in the book too.  I made a batch for C to share with his class and they were a big hit.  Click here to visit Natasha Wing's blog where you can find the recipe.  There is also a recipe for jalapeno bagels in the book; I think they sound delicious, but I have never tried making bagels at home.

We highly recommend the chango bars; make some today for an easy, sweet Cinco de Mayo treat!