Healthy Halloween Goodies

Aloha everyone! My Fall break ended quickly and I realized that there are only 2 weeks until Halloween!!

If you follow my blog then you know Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.  I love everything about it, including eating my favorite candy!

This is the worst part of Halloween for me.  I eat so much sugar especially at school and crash when I get home.

I have been really good about changing up my diet and not eating so much processed sugar.  In fact since doing the Whole30 diet in June I have kept up some really great habits and passed them onto my family.

I want to continue with this for my class party this year.  If I keep it a free for all I will be bombarded with sugary treats and that's not healthy for anyone.

So I found a few healthy, affordable and easy alternatives for our class Halloween party.

How cute and fun are these orange pumpkins?! 

Put out some Sharpies and have your students decorate their own!  

Source-Disney Baby

These String Cheese monsters are fun too,
and kids could again decorate their own!  

Source-Cleverly Inspired

Another quick and easy idea that kids would love to make!

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Pumpkin Quesadillas will be a hit with many of my students!!

Source-Crafty Morning

These Banana Ghosts and Pumpkins are so fun and
I am sure will disappear very quickly!

Source-Princess Pinky Girl

Mummy Dogs are too cute!!
As a mom I would probably substitute with lower fat turkey dogs.  

I don't think the kids would notice.

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I know many of my parents are busy like me and most of these snacks take some prep time.  I plan to even ask parents to send in healthy alternative snacks like veggie chips or popcorn.  

I was checking out one of my favorite sites, Nuts.com and found a great page for all kinds of healthy snacks.

I may or may not have loaded up my cart with lots of snacks for me and my girls!

I know many schools now days have rules about parties and not even allowing cupcakes for birthday parties.  Hopefully some of these ideas will help to create a fun and healthy Halloween in your classroom this year.  Check out my Pinterest page Kids Cooking for even more ideas!

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Halloween Week

Aloha and Happy Halloween Week!  I love getting ready for Halloween.  I am a little obsessed with it actually!  My girls and I start planning out costumes in September.  Ever since they were babies I have made their costumes.  I always try to have a theme, but now that they are older, they have their own ideas.

Here is a little collage of previous costumes.

Here is a picture of my girls and I last year.

This year my daughter wanted to be The Bride of Frankenstein after seeing those crazy foam headpieces at Target!  I get really excited when I have a project.  So we scoured Goodwill and Savers for everything we needed.  

We found a white dress for a few dollars, some clunky boots and we wrapped her arms in gauze (not wrapped yet in this picture).  I loved doing her hair and makeup.

I have always wanted to dress 60's mod.  I was born in the summer of love and I really enjoy looking at pictures of how my mom was dressed.   I picked up this fun dress at Ross for $8 and just cut it.  I bought a beret and some glasses for my husband who was my beatnik poet boyfriend. I posted some pictures on Instagram as well.

I wish you could see how high I got my hair after all the teasing and hairspray!  And finally my daughter who was taking the pictures.

Do you see a trend in her outfits?  I think this is the 4th time she has been a leopard!  She is obsessed with leopard print.  I have to scan her outfits daily for school or she tends to look like Peg Bundy! 

Anyway we headed out and my youngest was so excited about entering the costume contest, because last year her friend won.  She is very competitive, much like her mother.

Well our hard work paid off, she won!  She won a horse riding package for two at Turtle Bay Resort.  She was so excited, and so was I.

Well now that I have bored you to tears.  I will return to prepping for my classroom.  This week is Halloween/Pumpkin week and I have tons of activities lined up, but we will see how many of them I get to.  I have some fun writing prompts about costumes, spiders and Halloween.  If you would like a copy of those click {HERE}.

In math we will be starting 2 digit addition, and in science we will continue with nocturnal animals and throw in some fun pumpkin activities.

For Halloween I plan to give my students a pencil and a new tag for their award necklace.  I made up these cute tags.

Just click on the picture to grab them in Google Docs.  We are also going to be watching the Magic School Bus Going Batty episode on Netflix.

It should be an exciting week!  I have a feeling on Friday I will definitely ready for a break!  Hope you have a fabulous week as well.  I would love to hear what you have planned!

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October Treats

Aloha friends!  I have had a very restful week and am actually looking forward to heading back to school tomorrow.  I have so many fun things planned for the remainder of the month that I can't wait to get started!!  Okay, maybe I'm not that excited, but I know my students will be once we start rolling with our nocturnal animals and our Halloween activities.

Our school loves Halloween and we have a big parade every year.  I try to have the kids do some sort of artsy cooking project for our party instead of bringing in lots of sugary treats.  Last year we made these cute little treats.

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The year before we did dirt cups.

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Well last week I saw the cutest picture in a Good Housekeeping magazine of some Marshmallow treats on a stick.  They used fondant to decorate and I didn't think that would be ideal to use with 2nd graders. So I gathered up my taste testers and we decided to make them with what we thought would be fun.

I think there are tons of possibilities with this one!  They are a bit sugary, but so is Halloween.  My daughters loved making them and didn't have any complaints about eating them.  I usually send home a letter a week before Halloween asking for donations.  If each child brings in one item to decorate with I avoid the onslaught of random sugary treats that show up on Halloween day.

What do you think?  

Some sweet food for thought.

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Digital Paper and Frame Sale

Aloha friends!!  Hope you are enjoying your weekend.  I was up early today and hit the surf with some friends.  It has been so nice to get out in the water again!

For the last week I have been working on a project and I needed some backgrounds that I just didn't have.  So I decided to make them.  Once I got started creating I just couldn't stop.  66 images later I am done!

I wanted more of a doodle look to them and I played around with colors and ideas.  I really love the way they came out and now I have to get back to my other project and use them.

Are you creating some items for the upcoming holiday or for other items?  I decided to put all of my digital papers and frames on sale for the weekend.  These items will be 20% off in my TpT store until Sunday night.  Click {HERE} for my digital papers and click {HERE} for my digital frames.

Thanks so much for stopping by and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

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Halloween Goodies

Well this is the official weekend before Halloween and I am getting last minute goodies ready for my class.

My colleague made the cutest mosaic pumpkins this week and I just had to do it with my class.  But I changed it up a bit and had them use different colors.  I think they came out really cute.

  On Halloween we  have our parade first thing and then we get on with the day.  I have some fun reading activities planned and then a group writing activity.  For math I plan to have a graphing activity with these fun little rice crackers I found.  Do you have these on the mainland or is this a Hawaiian/Japanese item?? 

There are pumpkins, bats, bones and ghosts in the package.  It will be fun to see their results.
After lunch we are going to be making fun little pudding cups.

Ours will have some worms and a gravestone out of a graham cracker as well:)



I also plan to give them a Halloween pencil, but I will spice it up a bit with these cute tags I made.

Just click on the pic and you can grab them in Google Docs if you want them:)

Halloween is a crazy day especially on a Wednesday, but I really enjoy it. The kids are so excited and it's nice to take a break from your regular curriculum.  

This year I plan to be Medusa.  I found a simple black dress at Goodwill and I made a headband with pipe cleaner snakes.  My daughters costumes are their own creations this year, I didn't really have to do much. I'm a little sad because I have always made their costumes since they were babies.  It's one of my favorite things to do.  Here are a few pics of our costumes over the years.

Last year I wanted to be the Mermaid Family, but my oldest wouldn't go for it she wanted to be a jellyfish!! We got so many compliments on her costume I couldn't believe it!!

Do you dress up for Halloween at your school??  I would love to know what you plan to be this year!

My friend Sarah over at Kindergarten Korner is having a fun costume linky. Head over and link up:)

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